


Heavy is the Head

by runrarebit



Series: Descent [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: AU, Barely leashed writer running free and not worrying for once, Casual Murder, Confusion, Dreams, Evolving summary, F/M, Family Issues, Film canon pretty much only and even then questionable in places., Force-Sensitive Hux, Grief, Hux Backstory, Implied/Referenced Brainwashing, Kylo Ren Being a Little Shit, M/M, Misunderstandings, Multi, Not Canon Compliant, Parent Death, Past Child Abuse, Past DubCon, Past Exploitation, Past Rape/Non-con, Past Underage, Poor Hux, Possible Redemption, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Probably not how one's supposed to write something, Psychic interference, Regret, Self indulgent navel-gazing like usual, Sexual Harassment, Sexual Violence, Slow Burn, Spoilers, Tags May Change, Titles are not my forte, Trauma, Violence, Visions, War, family violence, mentioned animal death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-02-16
Packaged: 2019-03-10 13:04:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 22
Words: 48,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13502156
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/runrarebit/pseuds/runrarebit
Summary: Kylo Ren and Hux return from their journey to the First Jedi Temple to a fracturing First Order. Hux is haunted by his experiences on the island, while Kylo Ren seems determined to ignore them in favour of focusing on the immediate threat. Tensions are running high, treachery abounds, and misunderstandings threaten to splinter things further.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> So I decided to split this here after all. Thanks you so much to everyone who stuck around for the previous fic, which I've renamed Long Live the King btw, especially those who left kudos and commented. I hope you enjoy this one too, but fair warning if things go as planned the ride's about to get bumpy.

The Fleet is gone. There is no way he can deny it. It is gone. It is not hiding somewhere, certainly not behind the planet, not behind any nearby moon, or asteroid belt, it is just gone. There are bodies out there, not from the Supremacy, bodies of officers and techs who served on the surviving Dreadnoughts. Scans show signs of a violent death, the weapons used belonging to the First Order. One of those bodies is probably Lieutenant Fal Maroos. A mutiny. Treachery. Treason.

He burns with the Dark Side. The air around him sits heavy, hazy. Hux is the only one brave enough to get close.

The redhead primped and polished himself back into the shape of General on the shuttle back to the Finalizer. He stands stiff backed, expressionless, beside him. They both stare out onto remains of the Supremacy, the Dreadnoughts, the dead. 

“We have a reply from Dominion Base,” one of the commstechs all but whimpers. 

He senses Hux glance at him. “Patch it through” he bites out.

“You have to be kidding yourselves,” a woman’s voice rings through the command deck. Posh. Core world accent. “Snoke is dead. No one in their right mind is going to follow Leia Organa’s mad Jedi son and Brendol Hux’s bastard brat. No. _We_ are the First Order. The _real_ First Order. The Galaxy will be ours. You have one ship, a skeleton crew, and no funds. What can you do about it? Nothing, that’s what. The two of you will be lost to history, with the Jedi, with Snoke, and with the bitches that birthed you. _Supreme Leader_ Savim out.”

He draws deeper on the Dark, past that point where he no longer struggles to tell if it feels freezing or burning. It might as well be cauterizing the place where his heart once was. “How many is that?” he asks.

“‘Real’ First Orders?” Hux asks, voice as cold as he feels. “I believe we are at five. Six if you count ourselves, arguably the only _real_ ‘real’ First Order.”

“That’s all of them?”

“We still haven’t heard from Marshall Pliadine on Pas Bbenoea, but I believe he will fall into line behind Savim. There is still the High Council, but either they’ll declare themselves one or more ‘real’ First Orders, or I imagine they’ll join up with one of the others. Again, Savim seems a good bet.” Hux is too calm for the outrage they’re facing. The redhead’s voice remains level, his face expressionless. “Some of the others are probably waiting to see how things progress in the next few weeks before they declare a side, if they declare a side and don’t simply go independent. Then there are some of the smaller planetary bases, who will probably be overthrown on a local level, or simply be absorbed into the local power structure.” 

“I am going to kill them. All of them!” the last ends on a roar. His lightsabre is in his hand before he thinks, red light bouncing off the walls. The blade looks as stable as he feels. He whirls around, looking for something to destroy.

Hux steps in front of him. The man is pale, ghost-like. The red light of his lightsabre bounces eerily off the planes of the redhead’s face. “Please. Don’t. Savim was right, this is our only ship. We cannot afford to damage it now.”

The man is right. It galls. For a moment he pulls even more of the Dark Side into himself, preparing to crush the redhead, but he can’t. Even the thought feels wrong. He extinguishes his lightsabre. He feels defeated.

“We need to discuss strategy-” the redhead begins.

“What strategy?!” he snarls. “It’s all ruined! Everything is ruined!”

“This is a setback, it is not the end,” Hux’s voice is so measured. So calm. It simultaneously pisses him off and makes him want to curl in close, to absorb some of that calm himself. 

He takes a deep breath. He forces himself to think. “Ok. Strategy. Talk.”

Hux glances around, “Not on the bridge. Perhaps, my quarters?”

He thinks about it, about being in Hux’s private sanctuary. No. He wants something on his own terms. “No. Mine.”

“Understood,” the redhead nods. He starts to lead them back to his rooms as Hux gives orders for their absence. “Remain vigilant. Report anything suspicious immediately. Shields on maximum and ready cannons. Prepare for an ambush.” What a mess. 

Hux catches up to him easily. They pace the halls of the ship with the redhead two steps behind him. 

His quarters are the same as they have been all times he’s been stationed on this vessel. Dark rooms. Small. His grandfather’s melted helmet still on display. He feels a twinge of embarrassment at the latter. It seems childish these days.

The door closes behind Hux. The redhead stands before him, at attention. Not even his pale eyes wandering around the room. “Sit,” he says, gesturing to his chair. He never has guests, so he takes his own seat on the berth. Hux sits. 

There is a faint noise, a chattering sound. His possessions are rattling a little. The Dark Side, as it flows through him, making the deck shake. 

“So,” he says, looking at Hux, “What hope do we possibly have?”

“More than you think, Sir.” Hux replies. “What do you know of ‘Order 66,’ at the end of the Clone Wars?”

He frowns, thinking. He’s heard of that before. A conversation, half overheard, from his childhood. “Was it the order that made the clone soldiers turn on the Jedi?”

Hux nods. “Yes. My father was obsessed with the topic, convinced his Stormtrooper program was better than clone soldiers, but also fascinated by the loyalty programmed into the clones. He was also paranoid, increasingly so over the years, convinced that one day someone would betray him and try to oust him from the Order he’d helped found.”

“Are you telling me the Stormtroopers are programmed with an ‘Order 66’?” Why hasn’t he heard of this before. Perhaps Snoke didn’t trust him enough to tell him.

“Something like that, though my father ensured that the target of the order could be selected as required, depending on who he believed was betraying him at the time, instead of as with the original ‘Order 66’ which was simply to destroy the Jedi.” 

“How do we implement it then?” he says, eyes on Hux’s placid, expressionless face. “I want them dead.”

“It can only be implemented from the Stormtrooper Conditioning Centre,” Hux says. 

“We have Stormtroopers onboard, won’t whoever of our enemies in control of the Stormtrooper Conditioning Centre just implement it against us?” He could kill all the Stormtroopers personally. Maybe he’d feel better that way. The Dark Side is crowing inside of him at the possibility of death.

Hux shakes his head, copper hair gelled so firmly into place beneath his cap that it doesn’t even shift. “I doubt they know of it; I believe only my father, myself and Snoke were ever aware of it. Brendol Hux did not want to broadcast to his perceived enemies that he had the power to destroy them so easily. Not that it matters, the order is genelocked to my father and myself from when I was head of the Stormtrooper program, and the only person who had an override was Snoke.” 

“Didn’t he fear Snoke?” He never met Commandant Hux. He does not know what he would have made of the man. His mother had despised him, back in the day.

“No. I don’t think he did.” Hux lets out a tiny, rueful laugh. “Foolish, as it turned out.”

This is sounding promising. “So, we get to the Stormtrooper Conditioning Centre, issue ‘Order 66’ or whatever it’s called, and the Stormtroopers destroy our enemies for us. Simple.” It does seem simple, too simple. “Where is the Stormtrooper Conditioning Centre?”

“During the time we were hiding in the Unknown Regions the SCC was an independent ship, but recently it has landed on what one could consider its spiritual homeland,” Hux sucks in a deep breath, something like discomfort crossing his face. “Arkanis, and Snoke’s last orders had it being integrated with the remains of my father’s Academy there.”

“So we go there, take the facility, issue the order, win.”

Hux looks apprehensive. The calmness finally breaking down. “Unfortunately it’s not that easy, Sir. We do not have the fuel to make it to the planet. We do not have enough munitions to take the facility, let alone defend ourselves from attack, and we will be attacked, the Centre has always been well guarded and is always full of Stormtroopers, and worst of all Arkanis is very near Dominion Base. We are not in a position, right now, to pursue this plan.”

He draws deeper from the dark. Everything in the room seems to jump in place. The air gets thicker. Light has trouble penetrating the shadows. Hux seems pale, skeletal. “So what do you suggest we do?”

The redhead takes a steadying breath. “We need to refuel. We need to gather our resources. We need to lay low. We cannot afford to get drawn into a battle right now. It is a miracle we weren’t ambushed when we returned here, but I suspect the ships of our fleet were probably going off to different masters and didn’t value cooperation enough to stop and take us out first. The major players, the five or more other ‘real’ First Orders will turn on each other. Some will not survive the coming days. I suggest we let them do so while we prepare for our attack on Arkanis.”

He doesn’t like the idea of waiting around, letting his enemies live when he could be killing them. The Dark whispers to him. It wants blood, but it can wait. He must listen. Hux is useful. The man continues talking. “Firstly, we will need credits. I don’t have anywhere near enough in my small savings, neither, I think, do you. I doubt anyone will be willing to give us a loan, as precariously positioned as we are and I’m not sure how we would go about gaining access to Snoke’s accounts, though I will think on the matter.” 

One day the galaxy will be his. Then everyone will regret getting in his way. He breathes in, out, exhaling Darkness.

The redhead takes another steadying breath. Hux is looking almost nauseous. “I am aware that you ordered techs to cut free Snoke’s quarters and bring them onboard the Rectitude. Scans show they had not completed this task when the mutiny occurred. This is in our favour. The, the, the man had quite a collection of treasures, and as you know I have the access codes. I suggest we loot his rooms.” A gasped breath. Hux’s eyes are darting around. The Dark is pressing close, closing in on the man, enveloping him in its embrace. “I am also aware of who your father was. I ask, and only because of the dire situation we have found ourselves in, if you have any knowledge of where to sell such items?”

The mention of Han Solo shatters something. The Dark retreats. “Yes,” he bites out. Memories he doesn’t want clawing at his mind. “I know places.”

Hux is pressed back in his chair, as far from him as the man can get. He looks far too pale. His lips are tinged a little blue. One of those lips is sucked between the redhead’s teeth. The man releases it, reluctantly meets his eyes. “Are there any more resources you can think of that I haven’t considered?

Yes. There are. “I will call in the Knights of Ren.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter might be a bit upsetting to some readers. It deals with family violence and the death of a parent.
> 
> I just want to thank you all so much for the kind comments and all the kudos on the last chapter, I am very thankful, it really is a good feeling to know people are reading what I write, and even if you don't comment or leave kudos I want to thank you for reading.

War, war, war, war. Back to the art of making war. Back to the art of bringing death. He feels sick. If he looks at the floor wrong he can see his mother’s corpse.

Kylo Ren has retreated into the Dark. So far into the Dark that it’s seeping out, sitting like miasma, contaminating the air around him. Hux cannot imagine cradling this version of the man’s head on his lap, petting his hair, sleeping in the same bed safe and unmolested. 

The knowledge he’d hidden from himself, the knowledge the vision brought up, keeps tearing at him. He’s going to die. Kylo Ren is going to see it, turn on him, kill him. He almost welcomes it. 

He steps over his mother’s corpse. He needs to return to the bridge.

The Knights of Ren. What a horrifying idea. Even more Dark Jedi tearing up the place. Bleeding contamination. Bringing death.

_His father had lost his temper. It was nothing different than all the times before. He’d just gotten too rough, and she was getting too delicate. He broke her. Left her on the floor. Why did he even drag her with them? She hadn’t wanted to leave Arkanis, she’d only gotten on the ship because Brendol threatened to kill him if she didn’t. His father’s hand had been so tight on the back of his neck. Why hadn’t his father let her be free?_

He doesn’t want to do this. He’s not sure he can do this. He hasn’t been reconditioned since his father got Snoke to reinforce it with the Force. Snoke’s dead. General Hux as was is no more. 

_She’d been going cold when he found her. He hadn’t needed to touch her to know she was dead. He could feel it. Had known even before his ship had docked with the SCC. He remembers lifting her head onto his lap. It had lolled there, heavy. There had been no muscle control left._

The plan is a solid one. As solid as he can manage through the screaming in his mind. There will be casualties, of course, every war has its casualties, but they should remain fairly well removed. The people on this ship, his people if he can bring himself to think of them as thus, will hopefully come through ok. If the Supreme Leader and his coming companions don’t slaughter them all for fun.

_He’d packed the necessities. He’d taken her body, dragged it along the corridors to the shuttle. The Commandant had found them, fought him, hit him, stabbed him. He’d hit back. He’d managed to break free. He remembers flying for days, not sleeping, the wound getting red and hot and throbbing. Then he’d found the moon, an old abandoned Separatist Base._

He’ll check on the command staff while Kylo Ren terrifies techs into finishing cutting the Supreme Leader’s quarters free and dragging them on board. Hopefully nothing’s happened. If he had been in command of any of the mutinying vessels he would have lurked around, just out of sight, and blown the returning Finalizer to dust and vapour. 

_The moon had been mostly covered in jungle. It was hot. His mother’s corpse was already starting to stink. The bugs had come for her. He’d given her to the waters, as she would have wanted, though it had been river water and not sea. He’d wrapped her in the craft’s only blanket, weighted her down, and submerged her downstream from the base. There had been big turtles in the water. Life had taken her, as was the way of her people._

They salute as he steps aboard the bridge. “Report,” he orders and watches them as they have nothing to say. They’re afraid. Fear is almost as thick here as the Dark Side was in Kylo Ren’s quarters. He wonders if they feel doomed. If they wish they had been aboard another craft, a vessel slinking off at this moment to report to treacherous masters. 

_He’d been delirious at that point. Sick with infection. He can remember walking abandoned corridors, running fingers down plasteel walls being consumed by the jungle. Life finds a way to return. It cannot be held at bay forever. There had been room after room filled with droids. They had stared at him, decommissioned, not alive but not dead. He can remember running hands over their faces, imagining reaching into their processors and breathing life into them once more._

He stares out onto the stars. Out onto Crait. An abandoned Rebel base, like so many other abandoned bases in this galaxy. Has it ever known anything but war? Is he just another cog in a machine that’s been going since the dawn of time? Again the image of figures walking, fighting, dying. 

_He had found the communication station. He had sent out a coded message to Senator Organa. He had told of Snoke. Of the First Order. Of their command structure, their members, their weapons. Anything he could think of. He had spoken until his voice was hoarse, until he had nothing more to say, and then he had crawled off back to the riverbank to wait to die._

“Sir!,” one of the commstechs declares, saluting as he looks over. “The Supreme Leader requests your presence at supply dock C.”

“Tell him I’m on my way,” he says, turning with a sweep of the greatcoat draped over his shoulders. 

_His father had found him. Dragged him all but insensate aboard the man’s shuttle. Dumped him into a bacta tank. When he’d come to they were on the SCC, he was being dragged off to reconditioning. He can’t remember how many times his father put him through the process. Again and again. He barely felt human after, felt like nothing more than the urge to war. Then the Commandant had dragged him in front of Snoke, and the man had done **something,** something with the Force, and he as he was had died. No, not quite died. Had gone to sleep, only to wake sometimes trapped in the horror of it all. Then Snoke had died. Then he was free, but not really. Not free. Still a part of this infernal machine._

The crew salute him as he passes. He wonders how many of them would love to strike him down where he stands. Kill Kylo Ren. Free themselves of their predicament. Up ahead he sees Lieutenant Mitaka, looking pale and worried. Those two Stormtroopers are shadowing him, even though they are probably supposed to be doing their duty somewhere else. 

He thinks of FN-2188, her familiar face beneath that helmet. She looks so much like her brother. Not as much of an impeccable record, not that impeccable records prevent treason as the man had proved. She’s been recommended for reconditioning once, though it was found to be unnecessary. He thinks of his father’s hubris in numbering siblings sequentially. It made it too easy for any rebellious Stormtrooper to discover family ties. He had made sure never to do the same. He thinks FN-2187 is a fool.

He thinks of FN-2439, his records shown he’s been reconditioned twice. Noncompliant. Disrespectful. Forms attachments. Unnecessarily vicious in a fight. One more transgression and he’s facing execution. He thinks of the man’s care, his worry, his affection for the Lieutenant.

He thinks of Dopheld Mitaka’s pale, frightened but _brave_ face when confronted by Kylo Ren, naked and enraged. They pass each other in the hall, Mitaka glancing at him with something so much like concern.

He steps over his mother’s corpse, where his father left her on the floor. He thinks of treason.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always thank you for reading, commenting and leaving kudos. Here's another chapter of Kylo Ren failing to cope with things.

Snoke’s quarters sit in the docking bay like a shiny, squat fungus. He watches as the techs, bleeding distress into the Force, creep out of their tow-transport. They had found the bodies of the techs he had sent out before they left for Luke’s island, huddling in their own tow-transport until the atmospheric regulators had died. They had been left behind in the mutiny.

It hadn’t taken long. The first lot of techs had nearly completed their work when they’d been abandoned. He supposes it’s worth something that they didn’t get a chance to finish the job. That the dreadful Savim woman, or some other disrespectful cur, wouldn’t be using Snoke’s possessions to bankroll their traitorous war. Cur. Cur. Cur. What a word. A word Snoke used for Hux. 

Where is the man? He doesn’t have the patience for this. He starts pacing, back and forth back and forth, where is he? He requested Hux’s presence. Hus isn’t here. Next time it won’t be a request. He draws from the Dark again, letting its strength comfort him.

“Supreme Leader, Sir!” Hux appears. Salutes. 

“Your codes,” he demands. 

“At once, Sir,” the man replies. They approach the door to Snoke’s quarters as one. Hux inputs his codes. He feels anticipation, Snoke never allowed him so deep into the man’s private world. He wonders how Hux was allowed. 

Inside there’s an antechamber and already the part of him that was once Solo can’t help noticing the wealth they can strip out and sell. There are paintings on the wall, and tapestries, and the floors, walls and ceiling are clad in tiles of slick, black stone, so well laid that he can only spot the joins by using the Force. If they can strip the tiles off without damaging them too badly he imagines quite a lot of petty warlords and local rulers in parts of the Outer Rim will pay decently to have them for their palaces.

He imagines stripping the whole place down, taking every one of Snoke’s luxuries, and even selling the material the rooms are made of as scrap. He thought gives him an odd sense of satisfaction. Still he clings to the Dark. His anger is such he can’t bring himself to let it go.

Hux leads on into a main room clad in such careless wealth that he hasn’t seen since he was a small child, following his mother around the Core Worlds of the New Republic, listening to her quiet criticisms of the way the wealthy and elite were living in this time when there was still such inequality. His father had found it amusing. Luke, when solicited for an opinion, had been grave. He had always talked of so much more work to do.

“This is the main room,” Hux says, a vague gesture encompassing the space. He points to door, “That is Snoke’s bedroom.” Another door, “The library.” A final door, less glamourous “The kitchens.” Hux swallows, audible. He seems uncomfortable. “The bathroom is accessible through the bedroom, as is Snoke’s wardrobe. Now, if you’ll excuse me. I will return to the bridge.”

“No,” he says, curiosity is burning in him now. He walks towards the redhead, eyes making subconscious catalogues of all the treasures he passes. Some will be easy to sell, some will require finding specialised buyers. This room alone will probably keep the Finalizer in fuel, munitions, weapons, rations and maybe mercenaries for at least the next year. “How do you know all this? Why do you have codes? What reason could Snoke have to allow you into his private chambers?”

“It’s not important anymore,” Hux says, averting his eyes. A brush against the man’s mind. Don’t look don’t look don’t look don’t look don’t look don’t look. 

“It’s important if I say it’s important,” he snarls. Hux is hiding things from him. He pulls the Dark close. He feels none of the familiarity, the affection, the closeness to Hux of the island. Now it seems everyone is an enemy. “Tell me.”

Hux meets his eyes. “No.”

The Dark lurches out of him without thought. It wraps around Hux, this creature denying his dominion, and drags him close. It doesn’t throttle him, not yet, but a strand of the Force curls around his throat in preparation. Hux is white in his grasp. His eyes are huge, pale, red-rimmed. Still he doesn’t avert his gaze. 

He reaches out, crushing whatever weak mental defenses the man has, and _takes_ the knowledge.

_Snoke on Hux. Snoke holding Hux down. Hux riding Snoke. Hux face down. Hux in Snoke’s lap. Hux’s face in Snoke’s lap. Snoke’s fingers in Hux’s hair. Hux in Snoke’s bed. Snoke in Hux’s bed. Snoke as a Force-projection. Snoke as a man. Snoke’s fingers on Hux’s pale skin. Snoke reflected in Hux’s pale eyes._

He breaks away. Drops Hux, who lands with a soft sound of pain. A lance of Force Lightning blasts a couple thousand credits worth of damage in those shiny black tiles. He is disgusted. 

“You were his whore,” it is a statement, not a question. So that’s what the Force was trying to tell him, not that Hux was made for him, a comfort and companion for him, but that Hux was Snoke’s. That Hux cannot be trusted. 

He pulls hard on his connection to the Dark. It hurts. He is the Dark. He feels empty. “Did you fuck your way up the chain of command?” he asks, conversational.

Hux begins to get to his feet. He brushes the man’s legs out from under him so Hux stays sprawled at his feet. The redhead doesn’t look up. “No.”

He laughs. The sound comes out sick, half hysterical. “If I told you to spread your legs for me right now would you do it?”

“No,” the redhead repeats. The man’s form seems hunched, defeated. Something, some part of him, some foolish, childish part, hurts to see Hux like this. 

He channels more of the dark, crushing that feeling. “Not even to secure your place in my new Order?”

Finally Hux looks up again. He almost flinches from the look in the man’s eyes. He feels stripped down, _known_ in a way he does not want to be. “No.” 

“Get out,” he breathes, and then stronger. “GET OUT! I don’t want to see you right now!”

Hux scrambles to his feet, arms wrapping around himself as he stumbles towards the door. His body is so thin. He looks so fragile. The Dark pounds in him, stronger than his own heart. “I will be considering what role someone like you has in our future,” he means it as a threat. Hux simply nods. Resigned, not even turning back. Then the man is gone. 

Kylo Ren sinks down to sit on cracked, thousand credit tiles. He does not weep.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I can't thank you all enough for your kind reception of this story, your kudos and reviews are keeping me motivated.

He is still alive. As far as he knows he is still General. He has not been allowed on the bridge or in any command centre since he was dismissed from the Supreme Leader’s presence. He does not know if Kylo Ren is still following his plan. He has not seen the man since the scene in Snoke’s quarters. 

_He is still alive._

It won’t last. The man must have been so disturbed by what he saw, those fleeting, flickering visions of his relationship with Snoke, that he must not have looked any deeper. One day he will. On that day Hux will die.

He sits in his pyjamas, cross-legged on his berth, and nibbles on a rationbar. It is dayshift. He has no need of bathing, dressing, reporting anywhere. 

On the plasteel table welded to the floor by his bed a cup sits, steaming next to the wooden box containing Luke Skywalker’s lightsabre. The smell of seaweed sits lightly in the air. The cloth-wrapped parcel the creature on the island had given him had contained strips of dried seaweed. He has been cutting small pieces off and steeping them in water to drink. After the first three uses they lose their flavor. They won’t last forever. He should throw the rest out. He knows that indulging himself, even in such a small way, will weaken his resolve and make things harder to endure. He lifts the cup, sipping the slightly salty water, chasing down the flavorless pap of the rationbar. 

It has been days since he spoke to anyone, days since he even left his rooms. He can remember stumbling away from the Supreme Leader, can remember the man’s words echoing in his mind. Kylo Ren is wrong about him, but there’s no point trying to convince the man, no point trying to convince anyone of anything when the very air around them sits heavy with the Dark Side. Whatever he was to Snoke he doesn’t think he earned his rank on his back. Maybe he did, but of he did it wasn’t because of his own choices.

He thinks of his mother, of her helplessness, of the credits she earned working in the kitchen going back to help her people where they eked out their living on the periphery of Arkanisian society. Living in small clusters on the treacherous, rocky shores of the estuary, their way of life threatened even before Imperial occupation. What his father had done to her made her a whore in the eyes of much of mainstream society. The thinks maybe next time he runs across Poe Dameron he will inform there are worst things to be than the son of a whore. Being the son of Brendol Hux for one.

He is afraid. There are many parts of that fear that seem justified, after all he is in an even more precarious position than everyone else aboard the Finalizer. It is not justified that he finds himself afraid _for_ Kylo Ren. Not even Snoke lived so much inside the Dark as the man is doing now. 

The man has turned on him, whatever tenuous connection he felt forging between them on the island must have been an illusion, and if not, then not important past the moment. 

His communicator chirps. He looks at the thing, briefly considering taking it to the bathroom and flushing it down the toilet. Instead he puts the cup back on the table.

“Hux here.”

“General,” the commstech’s voice hesitates a moment over his title, before strengthening. “The Supreme Leader requests your presence in the shuttle bay. You are to be advised that you have a mission and should pack appropriately for a desert moon.”

He pauses. Takes a deep breath. Wonders if this is his death he can feel, breathing down his neck. “Were you to give me any more details?”

“No Sir,” the commstech responds.

“I see. Hux out.”

He finishes the rationbar, takes the cup and leaves it in his small sink. He bathes and dresses mechanically, he has nothing suitable for a desert environment, all heavy wool. For so many years he has been stationed aboard the Supremacy, the Finalizer, Starkiller base. Cold places. 

He shoves shirts, underwear, trousers into a bag; he has no idea how long he’s expected to be gone. Stuffs the seaweed deep down inside, where it is hidden like something shameful. He straightens the cap on his head, smooths his greatcoat, looks around his rooms as if for the last time. He turns to leave. He turns back. Hesitates. He glances at the box containing the lightsaber, impulse making him want to reach for it, he forces himself to turn once more and leave.

Officers avoid his eyes as he walks the corridors of his ship. His disgrace must have spread throughout the Finalizer. For so many years they have quivered, bodies convulsing to attention as he walked past, it is odd to move among them and not be feared. 

In the shuttlebay he finds the Supreme Leader, Lieutenant Mitaka, and a squad of Stormtroopers including both FN-2188 and FN-2439.

“Hux,” Kylo Ren greets him, as if they were strangers. 

“Supreme Leader, Sir,” he salutes.

Kylo Ren nods an acknowledgement. “You will be going to Maneshfva, one of the moons of uninhabitable mineral planet Chyur, in the Fva Amuir system. There you will be delivering several crates of the black stone from Snoke’s quarters to the palace of a woman called Ememri Ri, at the edge of the Sunsnake Desert, who will then transfer forty-five thousand credits to me. When you receive word that I have received the sum you will travel to the Copper Bell Cantina in the market city of Nfevrum, where you will meet a man who calls himself Sunny Adar. He is the agent of the Hutt Bo Bukwiina who is interested in purchasing several of Snoke’s collection of fragrances and aromatic resins, as well as some of his artwork and other goods, but will only commit to a deal once his agent has inspected them in person. The lowest price I am willing to accept for each item has been uploaded to your pad, study it. I will tolerate no mistakes. Do you think you can manage this task?” The voice is patronizing, the man doesn’t quite meet his eyes. 

“Of course, Supreme Leader,” he feels like a child. He wonders if Kylo Ren will strike out, not with the Force, but with his fists the way the Commandant did sometimes, randomly, when the man was giving orders and didn’t feel like he was being attentive enough. 

Kylo Ren says nothing. He can feel the man’s eyes on him, though the Supreme Leader won’t meet his gaze. The sense of wrongness, of Darkness that the man has had since they returned from the island and discovered the treachery has faded a bit. For a second he has the impulse to say something, to find some defense that would make things like they were before, but he has none and he remembers that he too is a traitor. 

“Take care Hux,” the man says suddenly. When his eyes flicker to the Supreme Leader’s face he finds him grimacing. “I expect to hear from you soon.” With that the man turns and stalks away, black robes swirling after him.

“Sir?” the Lieutenant’s voice draws his attention. 

“The cargo is loaded?” he asks.

Mitaka nods. “Yes Sir.”

“I suppose we’d better board then.” 

Mitaka gives the order. He turns towards the shuttle, watching as Stormtroopers pile on. A noise catches his attention. Another shuttle coming in to dock. There’s an edge to the engine’s sound, something sick, high-pitched. He blinks, face scrunching up without his permission. He forces his expression back to blank.

The shuttle lands. Its engines stop. The noise remains. Surreptitiously he shakes his head, raises a hand to rub at his ear. The ramp extends from the shuttle and two figures appear, dressed head to toe in black. Masked. One is humming to themselves, something eerie, off-tune. The other is completely silent. They make their way down the ramp. It feels as if the breath catches in his throat. The humming one passes first, the Dark heavy, hazy around them. Then the other. The other passes. 

_His world goes black at the edges. He feels **hunger.** A great yawning something, something that would devour all light._

The silent one stops, turns its head, _looks_ at him. He steps backwards. Instinctive. 

The humming stops. Everything stops. _“Lightsider.”_ He blinks. The impression of someone having just spoken to him lingers in his mind. He cannot remember anything being said. The silent figure continues on.

“Sir,” Mitaka’s voice, quavering. He turns to look at the man. “Who were they?”

“Two of the Knights of Ren,” he says, voice stronger than he feels. He follows the Lieutenant onto the shuttle.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick chapter. Thank you all for still reading.

Hux is gone. That officer, Mitaka, is gone. Mitaka’s Stormtroopers are gone. Good. He can’t deal with them being on the ship right now. _Kill them._ Not when they have all witnessed his weakness on Luke’s island.

_Kill them. Kill them, the knowledge goes with them. **No, not Hux. Keep Hux. Kill the others.**_

The Dark Side is making it hard to think. He needs it. He needs it or else everything feels like it will fall apart. When he releases his hold, when he stops drawing so hard on it, fear creeps in. The knowledge that he is unprepared, that he doesn’t know what he’s doing, starts to strange him.

Forget Hux. Hux was Snoke’s. _Foul. Grotesque._ The thought of his old Master on top of, inside, the redhead. Makes his teeth grind. He needs the Dark. Maybe those dreams had come from Snoke. Maybe when he severed their bond, when he killed the man, some ghost of Snoke’s memories had infected him. 

Hux is Gone. Gone gone gone gone gone gone gone. _Will he come back?_

Of course he will. Doesn’t matter if he doesn’t. Hux is unnecessary.

“My Lord,” he looks up. The bridge is quiet, the command staff working as silently as they can manage. Fear hangs heavy in the air. Fear and the Dark Side. Before him stand Saiva Ren and Gydn Ren. The first of his Knights to return.

“You seem stronger than the last time we met,” Saiva breaks off humming to say. 

_“One with the Dark,”_ Gydn echoes, half spoken, half projected into his mind.

It has been years since they have stood face to face. Once, long ago, when they were children they had played together, learnt together, been drawn to the Dark together. For a while, after they left Luke’s temple, they had fought side by side, rampaged an orgy of destruction on their path to their new Master, Snoke _on top of Hux. Fucking Hux._ More recently he has been stationed aboard the Finalizer, the Supremacy, Starkiller Base and they have been off doing errands for the old man. _Killed him. Good._

_“We felt him die”_ Gydn whispers into his mind.

“Snoke,” Saiva says out loud. “The First Order is yours now, My Lord.”

_If I can keep it,_ he carefully avoids speaking the truth out loud. 

“We have much to discuss,” he says, a glance around the bridge, at the Force-nulls trying not to look at them. “Come,” he strides away from the window, heading deeper into the ship. He should tell them about Luke, if they don’t know already. He wonders of they’ll grieve. A twinge of something. He pulls the Dark close around him, comforting. 

“Yes My Lord,” they say, perfect echoes of each other, falling into step behind him. Soon the others will be here. Maybe then he will actually feel in control.

_“We will serve you,”_ Gydn whispers in his mind.

The Finalizer is off to nearby Telbenefva to make its own set of deliveries to the rich, powerful and morally dubious there. He wonders if it is fate. He thinks of his vision where he found the island, thinks of **her** standing at a gaming table. It was probably lies. Sent to mislead him like the vision misled him into wasting valuable time, letting the Fist Order slip from his grip. Like Hux misled him. _In the vision, under Snoke._ Like his mind misled him about Hux.

“What were you doing for Snoke when he died?” he asks, curious. He is not sure where he’s leading them. If techs weren’t stripping Snoke’s quarters to the bones he can imagine taking them there, standing before them in splendor and glory. 

_”Killing,”_ Gydn’s mental/physical voice echoes.

“Raiding an old Sith archive,” Saiva says.

Together they say “Wasting our time.”

He nods. “I’m afraid there’ll be a bit more time wasting coming up, but soon, soon I promise you blood.”

He feels their delight in the Force. The Dark calls to him, tells him to join in, to revel in the future when he will have dominion over all. Something holds him back. _Making him weak. **Hux.** _

As one they look towards the shuttle bay. Darkness is incoming. More of their companions. He changes trajectory, leading the way. They arrive just as Jrii Ren, Neiro Ren and Xatjt Ren disembark.

“My Lord,” the three greet as one, voices echoing. Echoing. Echoing like something empty. He blinks. Pulls the Dark in close. Now there is only Rhadn Ren to arrive and his Knights will be complete. 

His communicator beeps. “What?” he snaps, then tries to modulate his tone. “Report.”

“Supreme Leader, Sir,” a commstech’s worried voice rings through the shuttle bay. “Sir, we are picking up readings from nearby, just out of the Fva Amuir system. If these readings are correct it is the Rectitude, Sir. She appears to be in trouble.”

A smile cracks across his face. “Prepare to engage,” he orders. He turns to his knights “It seems there’ll be blood sooner than I promised.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading, commenting and keaving kudos. I was too tired to post this last night.

The sun beats down upon the moon’s surface, white, burning. Already he feels sweaty, a little sick from the heat. Mitaka is red-faced beside him, dark hair escaping to stick to his skin. Overhead he can see the large, greenish mass of the planet, hanging heavy in the sky.

The sunlight reflects off the white stone of Ememri Ri’s palace, carved from a rocky outcrop at the edge of the desert. The building is like a large, white cake, roofed in copper that is going green in the air. Covered parapets protrude from the front of the building, from which hang thousands of tiny, glass windchimes tinkling in the faint breeze. In front of the building is a courtyard housing a lush garden, with trees, vines and flowering shrubs. The large, domed rooves of water cisterns beneath the palace the only disruption to the flow of space.

At the edge of the desert around the complex there are crops, livestock and a small settlement of simple houses built out of the same white stone. There is no water on the surface here, but the sound of pumps dragging it up from below sits as a bass rumble beneath the light noise of the windchimes. 

They were greeted at the heavy, defensible gate to the palace by guards, people of many different species, all armed and armored the same and bearing an air about them somewhere between suspicion and contempt. He’d stated their business, the crates of stone standing behind him, between the shuttle and the palace, surrounded by sweating Stormtroopers. Now they wait.

Eventually the sound of something metallic, tinkling, cuts through the air. A blue-skinned Twilek appears from within the palace, dressed in pale yellow silk edged with tiny copper bells. She is a little past her prime, her beauty aging gracefully. “You are here with the stone?” she asks, eyes taking in their uniforms. He has the feeling that she finds the situation amusing.

“Yes,” he nods. Gestures to the crates.

“I will inspect it,” it is not a question. She lifts a shawl hanging around her shoulders to protect her head from the hot sun and walks outside of the palace gates, guards moving immediately to flank her, hands on their blasters. 

He orders the Stormtroopers to remove the lids from the crates so she can peer inside. They do so, she takes her time, examining every crate, lifting tiles from the surface so she can inspect those beneath.

“It is good stone,” she says, eventually.

“It is,” he agrees. “If you are happy we will accept your payment.”

She nods. “Your men will bring it inside the courtyard. I will get my wife, she will pay.”

He agrees, gives the order, watches as the Stormtroopers shift the crates to where one of the guards indicates. The Twilek pads gracefully back into the palace complex. Time passes. The heat bakes through him. He wishes he could remove his greatcoat. Mitaka is wavering a little beside him.

The Twilek returns, a white-haired woman with her. This new-comer is dressed in white linen, embroidered with gold. She wears trousers, a tunic, sandals. Her body is strong, corded with sun-baked muscle. Her gaze is flat, greenish as the copper. “Ememri Ri,” she says, holding out a strong hand for him to shake. “You must be hot, General. I will send for some water.”

He waves her off. “It is ok, once you have transferred the credits we will return to our shuttle.”

“Liqa says the stone is good,” she says, her eyes flicking, affectionate to the Twilek by her side. “Will you accept thirty-thousand?”

“Forty-five,” he replies. He is not going to get drawn into this. The Supreme Leader will kill him.

“Thirty-five,” she counters.

“Forty-five,” he insists. “It is not up to me.”

She frowns, her eyes narrow. She inspects him, eyes roving over his face for a long time. Her expression eases. She nods. “Always worth a try. Forty-five thousand it is.” She takes a small pad from her pocket, presses a couple of buttons. “It is done. Are you sure we cannot get you any water?”

“It’s fine,” he holds up a hand, indicating he’ll be right back. He walks a little way from the gate, from the woman and Twilek, and comms the Finalizer. “Hux here, have the credits gone through?” He glances at the automated message that has appeared on his pad, confirming the transaction. Kylo Ren said he wanted to be contacted in person, anyway, it’s better to be sure.

A pause. “The Supreme Leader says yes.”

“Hux out.” He returns to the gate. 

Ememri Ri is standing under one of the trees, her arm around the Twilek’s waist. They are whispering to each other, so glad to be in each other’s company. He feels a pang. “Everything is in order. We will go now.”

The woman nods, turning to go back inside the palace. The guards move to close the gate. The Twilek lingers, suddenly darting forward, grabbing his forearm. “Brother,” she says, something strange in her voice. “Be careful, do not let the hot sun burn you.”

“I, I won’t,” he says discombobulated. He means to ask her exactly what she means, but she darts back inside the palace and the guards slam the gate shut almost in his face.

He blinks. Sweat drips into his eyes. Stings. “Back to the shuttle,” he commands. 

The cool air is a relief. He feels like he’s wilting into his seat. Mitaka all but collapses into the seat in front of him, taking off his cap and trying to slick his sweaty hair back. “Sir?” the man queries, voice hesitant. “Sir, I don’t think the Stormtroopers can cope for too long outside in their armour.”

“Our trip to the Cantina should be quick,” he says, not sure why he’s trying to reassure the man. He shouldn’t. He should be reinforcing their difference in rank and dressing him down for speaking out of turn. He is not his father. Mitaka has a good point, even if that good point is probably informed by fraternization. “We will be off this accursedly hot planet and back to the Finalizer before we know. We just have to endure.”

Mitaka hesitates. “If we’re not?”

He feels the rumble of the shuttle’s engines, sees the sun gleaming off the desert’s white sands, the heat shimmering in waves like the Dark shimmering off Kylo Ren. “Then we’ll have to make accommodations for the heat. I’m sure more weather appropriate gear will be easy to find in such a large market city as Nfevrum.” 

“Thank you Sir,” Mitaka breathes. When he glances at the other man he finds him staring determinately out the window. What a funny thing attachment is.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Atypically this chapter is Hux again. 
> 
> It's been a difficult day, though it didn't end so bad. We had a health scare with the other dog, but she's ok. I am so very thankful for it. 
> 
> I want to thank everyone who is reading this, as I try to do every chapter. I hope I'm not getting too annoyingly repetitive, but it does mean a lot to me.

Nfevrum sits in a natural valley, rimmed by high cliffs of white stone veined in green. The city sprawls around a giant, artificial oasis, the water pumped up from deep beneath the earth to gush into huge pools where life teems. The water glitters in the sun, the same bluish-green as the copper roof of Ememri Ri’s palace. Dwellings are cut back into the rock faces, piled one on top of the other, with narrow walkways and steep staircases the only way to access them.

The flat part of the valley has a few palaces, much the same as the one belonging to Ememri Ri, but closer together, without the agrarian sprawl around them. Much of the rest of the space is taken up with commerce. There are simple wooden stalls with brightly covered cloth awnings, more permanent shops made of the local white stone, pens containing livestock, lots containing vessels, restaurants, food stalls, an abundance of cantinas. Over, closer to the water there is a large park, some kind of pleasure ground, with a racetrack to one side. In the distance he can see green fields, crops irrigated by the water from below, standing almost luridly bright against the white sands of the desert.

The shuttle pulls in to a bay. A beep from his pad. An invoice for parking; 10 credits for the first hour, 20 credits for each hour after, 60 credits for a day, 100 credits for a week, 350 credits long term up to six months. He selects 60 credits, one day. Looking out onto the thronging masses, the myriad of beings bustling around from at least a hundred worlds, makes him suspect this might take longer than he wishes.

A beep. The money is withdrawn from his account. He wonders if he’ll be able to claim expenses. Probably not.

He downloads a map, squinting at it, trying to get his bearings. Apparently the Copper Bell Cantina is one of the largest cantinas in the Eastern Quarter, known for its lacquered copper roof that never goes green. He peers out of the window, trying to spot such a thing. A riot of colour confronts him. At least he knows which direction is East.

He leads the way from the shuttle, leaving the Stormtrooper pilot behind in the blessed cool. The Stormtroopers crowd around the chest carrying the goods for this Sunny Adar to inspect, hands on their blasters. He cannot even begin to imagine how the Supreme Leader will respond if the goods get stolen. 

“Keep in formation, be vigilant,” he orders. Mitaka is fidgeting beside him.

The heat is something else. Here, closer to the water, it is not the aching dryness of Ememri Ri’s palace, instead humidity sits heavy in the air, making it feel thick and hard to breathe. Beneath his coat his shirt and vest are almost soaked through with sweat. His hair is starting to escape, just like Mitaka’s, to hang in lank strands and stick to his face. He cannot imagine what it must be like beneath Stormtrooper armour.

“Brother, brother!” voices call out from everywhere. “This shawl brother. Best quality cloth.” “A blaster brother, very nice.” “We have glass beads. Blue beads. Green beads.” “Some sandals brother. Real Tauntaun leather. Imported.” “Best quality. Best price. You will not find the same for less.” “Kyber crystal brother. Guaranteed from Jedha. A necklace. Very nice around your pretty neck.” “Windchimes. Brother, brother, keep the sunsnakes away.”

Every now and then beings pass with their hands on their blasters, eyes vigilant, a gold-silk sash across their chest. Some kind of guard, he supposes. Beggars approach and then veer away when the Stormtroopers reach for their blasters, hungry eyes of a myriad species watching from a safe distance, eying them up, sneaking glances at the chest. He looks back to make sure it’s well guarded, but the Stormtroopers are doing their duty.

He cannot remember ever having so many sapient beings press so close. For a moment he feels dazed, he blinks, light clings to the edges of his vision, but he shakes it off. He can see a big copper roof in the distance, glowing in the sun. 

The Copper Bell Cantina is built around a central courtyard, a large tree sits in the middle, something green and fragrant, with fat green fruits ripening on the branches. Hanging over the gate that leads inside is a huge, round, copper bell with ancient looking carvings inscribed over its surface. 

As they push through the gate they fall under the shade of the tree. He could almost cry with relief. 

He goes to the bar, the Stormtroopers following, with Mitaka all but constantly glancing back to check on them. “Water,” her orders from the thin, yellow skinned being. “For all of us.”

“Ah,” the beings says, fixing large, lamp-like eyes on him, before glancing at the Stormtroopers. “it is too hot for you military types. Come, sit in the shade. I will bring you your water, and fruit if you want it. Fruit is good in the heat.”

He nods, glancing at the Stormtroopers. They look like mollusks cooking in their shells. He looks back at the being. “Ah,” it says “fifteen credits for water and fruit.”

He transfers the funds. “I am looking for Sunny Adar?”

“Ah,” the beings says, taking a large jug, ceramic, yellow glaze, and filling it from a cistern. “Yes. He says. He will be here soon. He says to make the nice men from the First Order happy.”

“Will you inform me when he arrives?”

“Ah,” the being takes another jug, fills it with more water. “I will do so. You should go sit. It is too hot for standing, talking.”

He goes to sit with Mitaka and the Stormtroopers, who have found a long bench in the shade of the tree. Mitaka breaks off talking to FN-2439 as he approaches, glancing up at him with concern. The Stormtroopers are doing their best to sit at attention, but they are beginning to droop. 

“Oh for-” he mutters. “Take your helmets off at least.”

They do so almost as one, each of them plopping their helmet onto the table near the chest with something like relief. He looks at the revealed faces, sweat beading up on their skin. In the future he is going to make sure every ship had desert appropriate armor, not just the ones stationed near desert planets.

A man dressed in white linen comes over bearing a large tray with the two jugs of water, clay cups, and a large platter of the same green-skinned fruit that hangs from the tree, sliced finely, the insides a shockingly intense madder-pink. He places it on the table, glancing up at Hux while he does so. “Ah brother,” the man says, his voice deep, “You have such beautiful eyes.” Then a smile, fine wrinkles crinkling the skin at the corner of his eyes. “I am Sunny Adar.”

The man straightens up. For a moment he’s struck by how much Sunny Adar looks like an older version of a Kylo Ren who must have avoided offending the Gods of proportion and aesthetic regularity. He’s not as tall, or as broad, and his skin is golden instead of pallid. The eyes are nearly the same, so is the black, wavy hair, though there’s a little silver at the temples. His features are smaller, more regular, his face squarer and more conventionally handsome. Hux blinks. The illusion vanishes a bit. Kylo Ren would never hold himself with such easy confidence. 

“Armitage Hux,” he says, then shakes himself. “General Hux of the First Order.”

“You should drink,” the man says, easing himself onto the bench between Hux and Mitaka. “Tender flowers wilt in such a hot sun.”

He gestures for Mitaka to pour them all a cup of water. The Lieutenant does, and he tries to ignore the fact that the first two vessels end up in front of FN-2188 and FN-2439. 

The water has a sharp, slightly metallic taste to it, very different from the nothing taste of the filtered water onboard a ship or the slightly salty water on the island. It is not quite cold, but still refreshing. He picks up a slice of the fruit, examining dense, seedless flesh. He takes a bite. Juice bursts onto his tongue, sweet and slightly tart, the flesh seeming to dissolve in his mouth. He takes another bite.

“These are the items, your treasures?” the man asks, gesturing to the box, after Hux has made his way through three more slices of the fruit. The man has been watching him this whole time, dark eyes roving over his face in a way that makes him uncomfortable.

“They are,” he answers, picking up another slice. Mitaka is nibbling away as well, and some of the Stormtroopers. FN-2188 is looking on fondly as FN-2439 picks up another slice and hands it to the Lieutenant before he has finished the one in his mouth.

“I will take a look then, my very great friend is eager to do a deal.”

He watches the man pull the chest over, unlatch it. His hand lingers near his blaster, just in case they are betrayed. Sunny Adar unpacks the chest, examining every item.

He unwraps cloth covered bundles to reveal ornate bottles, vials and jars containing various liquids, oils and resins. One by one he opens them, sniffs them, sometimes pokes them, before rewrapping them. 

Next he examines in ivory statuette of an explicitly naked dancing Twilek, ornamented in gold, that used to sit on a small shelf in the main room and make him feel uncomfortable. He thinks of the Twilek earlier, wonders if she’d ever been a slave like so many of them are. The statuette is placed carefully on the table. 

A long roll of cloth is removed, glistening gold in the sunlight, spider silk embroidered with gold threat, fabric for new robes that never got made. The man rubs the cloth between two fingers, hums to himself. 

The next item to be removed is a thick cloth bag holding something heavy. The man opens the bag and pulls out an ornate gold belt, big enough to fit a Hutt, made of delicate filigree work and set with precious stones. He examines the belt, turning it in his hands, before putting it back in the bag. 

Then it is three scrolls, one unrolled after the other, beautifully painted erotic scenes exposed briefly to the light. Sunny Adar’s eyebrows raise, the man glances at him. He refuses to look away from those dark eyes. The scrolls are rerolled.

A tapestry is next, the base fabric blacker than ink, so dark that it seems to absorb light. When the man unfolds the cloth it exposes a glimmering, abstract pattern picked out in coppery threads. A large, golden hand brushes the surface delicately, then the man refolds it and reaches for the next item.

He pulls out a small, wooden frame. Inside there is a figure, a little humanoid. Its skin is made of carved teeth, rust coloured liquid used to paint in features. A nest of the finest, copper coloured braids is its hair, real hair, from a real person, and it wears a little scrap of silk for a dress. He shivers as the thing passes into the dappled light beneath the tree. It always felt like it was watching him.

Finally Sunny Adar pulls out a leather folio, opening it to reveal twenty three unframed pieces of art from various artists. Some acclaimed, some unknown, some who only found fame after their death. The man flicks through all of them, making soft sounds at some of them, and packs them away. 

The man carefully places everything back into the chest. “I am impressed, my very great friend and I did not think the First Order would have access to such treasures. Your Supreme Leader Snoke’s collection, I imagine. We have heard here that he is dead, is this true?”

“Kylo Ren is our Supreme Leader,” he replies. “Snoke is immaterial.”

“I suppose that is true. Your Snoke certainly never gave my very great friend such an opportunity as your Kylo Ren has,” the man smiles, he seems to be always smiling. Kylo Ren never smiles. He wonders if a smiling Kylo Ren would look as much as if the man was contemplating eating you whole as a smiling Sunny Adar. 

“Will your friend be purchasing any of the items?” he asks, voice level. Mitaka pours them all another cup of water. He watches the last drops from the first jug dribble down into his cup.

“I will have to contact him,” Sunny Adar shrugs. “I will tell my very great friend of the quality of the items, as well as the beautiful General Hux’s great kindness in braving such heat to show them to me.” He blinks. _Beautiful?_ The man is fucking with him. If he thinks flattery will get him a better deal he has another think coming. “I will go do so,” the man says, getting to his feet, “and I will tell Hrjaea to bring you more water and fruit. Do not worry, I will pay.”

“You do so,” he says. “We cannot wait around here all day. I am sure that others will be interested in what we’re selling if your friend is not.”

A smile, rows of white teeth. “A good point, my brother, I will tell this to my very great friend.”

He watches the man walk over to the bar, leaning in to the bartender’s face, all friendly, before gesturing behind himself at their table. The yellow skinned being nods. Sunny Adar walks away, hand going to a commsdevice.

All they can do is wait. He watches FN-2188 lean in close to Mitaka and whisper something that makes him blush even redder. The other Stormtroopers seem unperturbed. They must know that this sort of behavior should be getting FN-2188, FN-2439 and Mitaka himself reconditioned. He wonders why they seem so calm. This is their squad, they should be nervous about what their comrades do in front of him. Stormtrooper squads tends to form bonds that not even his father could program out of them.

The yellow-skinned being, Hrjaea comes over, bearing a new tray with jugs and fruit. “Ah,” the beings says as he unloads it, placing two plates of the green skinned pink fruit and one of something translucent and orange on the table. “That Sunny Adar is a generous man. He says bring my beautiful friend and his friends water, bring them fruit. I will pay. A generous man. He says to me, you will have half customers on this day. I have friends coming. You will treat the nice men well. A generous man.” He puts down the jugs, pale green glaze this time, and loads the tray with the empty ones. The being’s lamp-like eyes meet his. “A dangerous man. You remember that, my brother. A dangerous man.” Before he can reply Hrjaea scurries off.

“What-?” Mitaka mutters.

“Yes, a dangerous man,” FN-2188 says, she shifts and he can see the hand she has clenched around her blaster. A glance around, she’s not the only one. “Are you sure we should go through with this Sir?” she asks.

A flash of Kylo Ren’s face if they return without the credits, just because the locals were making them nervous. “I appreciate the concern. Remain vigilant. The deal should not take too long.”

He picks up a slice of the translucent orange fruit. It feels slimy between his fingers. He takes a careful bite. Shocking sweetness erupts across his tongue, making him wince. He puts the slice back on the edge of the plate. 

They wait. They drink the water, eat the fruit. He notices with amusement that FN-2188 seems to prefer the orange fruit to the pink one. Eventually Sunny Adar returns, all smiles and welcomes. “My very great friend, he says he will buy all your treasures. This is good news.”

“It is,” he says, pushing a lock of copper hair out of his eyes. The man’s dark gaze seems to follow his fingers. “Shall we arrange the transfer of credits?”

“Ah,” the man interjects, sounding a lot like Hrjaea for a moment. “Well, you see, my very great friend he says that he will only buy your treasures if you and your friends bring them to him yourself. It is only about eight hours, across the desert, to his palace. There you can stay the night. Tomorrow I will bring you back.”

He blinks. “We could cross the whole moon in eight hours by shuttle.”

“Ah, but you see my brother, my very great friend he has defenses. No shuttle can get near. You will be shot down,” that smile again, a shrug. “Anyway, my very great friend will not welcome anyone who I do not bring to him with my transport.”

This is unbelievable. “The deal was for you to inspect the items here, and if you and he were satisfied, then credits would be exchanged. There was no mention of anyone going to his palace.”

“A man is allowed to change his mind,” those dark eyes rove his face “is he not, beautiful?”

“I must contact the Supreme Leader,” he finds himself getting to his feet. He looks at Mitaka. “Remain here, guard the chest.”

Mitaka nods. A couple of Stormtroopers, neither of them FN-2188 or FN-2439, get up and flank him as he walks into the Cantina, heading for a quiet corner with no patrons.

He comms the Finalizer. “Hux here. I need to speak to the Supreme Leader.”

There is a pause, then Kylo Ren’s voice. “Hux.”

“There has been a complication, the Hutt wishes us to bring the items to his palace personally before he’ll agree to transfer the credits.”

“But he has agreed to purchase them?”

“Yes.”

“Then what is the problem?”

“This wasn’t what was agreed. It will be an overnight trip, at least sixteen hours.”

There is another pause. He can hear something in the background, people scurrying about. “I don’t have time for this,” the Supreme Leader’s voice is cold. “Do what the Hutt wants. We need the funds.”

“But-” he thinks of Sunny Adar calling him beautiful. He feels uneasy.

“That is an order General,” the line goes dead.

He sits for a moment, breathes. In. Out. In. Out. Ok. He returns to the table, Sunny Adar is sitting where he was previously, chatting with FN-1996. “The Supreme Leader has agreed to your terms,” he says. “Before we leave we must return to our shuttle and gather supplies.”

“I understand,” the man says, getting to his feet. Standing side by side he is a little taller than the other man, an impression that may be exaggerated by his cap, though the dark-haired man is broader than he is, wider across shoulders, waist and hips. “But brother, my very great friend he must be allowed to feast you tonight. You would not reject his hospitality.” It is not a question.

“Of course not,” he replies, diplomatic, already dreading what the feast may entail. He gestures for the Stormtroopers and Mitaka to stand. “Shall we meet back here in an hour?”

“Oh, no,” the man says, shaking his head. “I think I should come with you. It has not escaped my notice that you are all not dressed for this climate. I will show you the best places to get better clothes, make sure they give you a good deal.”

“I’m sure we can manage,” he replies, remembering what he promised Mitaka. He glances at the officer, the Stormtroopers. Sweat drips down their faces. His own underthings are drenched, only the thick wool of his overcoat hiding how disheveled he’s becoming.

“Do not worry, my pretty friend, it will be no hassle. I have the time.”

Reluctantly he nods. Accepts the offer. As he follows the man, Mitaka and Stormtroopers in the rear guarding the chest, dark eyes glance back at FN-2188, at her hand still on her blaster.


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading. I'm sure I warned for violence, but just in case- this chapter contains violence.

The Rectitude floats ahead, engines dead, shields down, weapons inactive. Through the Force he can feel lifesigns panicking, scurrying around, desperate to save themselves. The ship should be scrambling fighters, but the fighter bay doors remain stubbornly shut. He waits, watches, tries to determine whether this is a trap. It does not seem to be. He senses no treachery in the Force, only fear.

Behind him his knights shift. He can feel them too, feel the Dark radiating off them in waves. They long for blood. He ignores the way his mind wants to linger on Hux, the last comm he had from the man, the complication. Hux overnight on the moon. Hux will be fine.

If they take the ship, and getting her running again proves to be a relatively easy task, they will have doubled the size of their fleet, and even if she remains dead in the water if they permanently disable her and kill her crew that’s a message sent, one lot of traitors punished. If they leave her here, let her remain without experiencing retribution, that will only further suggest their weakness.

How would Hux go about taking her? Probably a traditional space battle, but then again she is defenseless. A boarding party would probably be best, saves wasting munitions and prevents her from acquiring any more expensive damage if she’ s repairable. Hux would take some officers, probably a couple of platoons or a company of Stormtroopers. 

Five of his knights, himself. He hardly needs as many people as Hux. Six will do.

“Shields up, prepare to retaliate if it’s a trap,” he orders. Hesitates. This, this right here is when he needs Hux. Hux is not here, he glances around, frowning, which of the stupid little officers is next in line. He recognizes the badges of rank on one woman, points at her. “You, Captain, have the bridge.” 

“With me,” he says to his knights, stalking towards the fighter bay. “We’ll board her, kill anyone who opposes us, but try not to damage the ship. Our goal is to take the vessel. Understood?”

“Yes my Lord,” they say as one. Gydn’s voice echoing after the others are done.

He draws on the Dark Side, pulling deep from the burning well. Purpose fills him. Certainty. A gift in exchange for the promise of blood. They, all six of them, feel as one in the Force. The Dark beats where their hearts should lay.

Silently they board fighters and take off, lancing towards the Rectitude. He can hear nothing, not even his own breath, can see nothing but what the Dark shows him. They dock as one across the ship, pulling in to service bays and shuttle docks whose airlocks remain open, useless. They disembark. They reach for their weapons. They kill.

It comes to him in flashes. Flashes or terrified faces, the sense of fear in the Force. He lifts an officer, young, blonde, and crushes her with the Force, flings her body into a squad of Stormtroopers, knocking them down. His lightsaber is in his hand. It slices so neatly through armour. 

He’s taking heads. Body after body lies slumped in the hall behind him, some in armour, some in uniform. There’s a head hanging from his left hand right now, black hair sticking to his glove with blood.

He curls the Force around a fleeing tech. He _pulls_ instead of crushing, the man’s scream breaks off as his body comes apart, spraying the hallway, himself, the other techs cowering from him with blood. He drops the man’s parts, reaches for another.

He meets Xatjt in the hall, the slender figure perched on a Stormtrooper’s chest, twin daggers lodged up under the helmet. Their minds brush. Pleasure from Xatjt. Darkness from him. They pass, his lightsaber cutting down a fleeing officer.

He is on the bridge. Gydn is on the bridge. Everyone is dead, not a mark on them, he came for blood and has been disappointed. He thinks of killing the knight. Gydn meets his gaze, helmet blank, expressionless. He moves on. There is more death to be had.

Saiva this time. That humming again. Crouched over a struggling officer, he does not look. He is not interested in what the man’s doing. The officer is too close to death to satisfy his need for blood.

The halls are empty, the rooms are empty, the barracks are empty, the medbay is empty, the docks are empty. There is blood, bodies everywhere. He can still sense life, feel it in the Force, he follows.

He finds Jrii and Neiro, standing contemplating the security offices. The door is locked, barred from within. He can see figures moving around inside, an officer, some techs, a squad of Stormtroopers. The officer spots him, an older man, black hair going white, dark skin wrinkled into a look of distress. “Please,” the man calls out. “We disabled the ship. We want no part in the mutiny. We remain loyal to General Hux, to _you_ Supreme Leader.”

Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux Hux 

He gasps. He almost drops his lightsaber. His face itches. He lifts a hand, smearing the sticky blood around.

“We should kill them My Lord,” Jrii says, voice pleasant, as if discussing the weather. 

“That’s true. She has a very good point,” Neiro adds. 

“No,” he says, the word catching on his tongue. His lips feel numb. “No, we’ll bring them back aboard the Finalizer, let Hux deal with them when he returns.”

“Hux?” Jrii says, head tilted to the side. “The redhead?”

“Yes,” he replies. Frowns. “Have you met?”

“Not me. Gydn, in Snoke’s mind, just once.”

“What do you mean?” The Dark surges once more. 

Jrii dances backwards, hands raised, placating. “Just an impression, left by accident. Snoke left his shields down just a little too low, and Gydn has a way of getting in.”

“What was this impression?”

A shrug, “I think you should ask Gydn. These things are never accurate second hand.”

Neiro nods. “She’s right you know. Very clever she is. You wouldn’t want to go misunderstanding things would you, My Lord?”

“No,” he sighs. “I suppose not. Collect them,” he gestures to the people inside the security centre “ _gently,_ I’ll comm for a transport shuttle to take them back to the Finalizer.”

“As you say, My Lord,” Neiro replies. The knight creeps in close to the door, peers inside. “Are you going to let us in? We promise not to bite.”

The officer peers out at them. “No, No I don’t know that I will.”

“Oh, well that’s ok,” Neiro says, reaching for something in their belt “You just might want to move away from the door.”

The people inside the security centre scramble to the back of the room, the officer stepping in front as if he could shield them with his body. A pair of Stormtroopers try to pull him aside, but he just shuffles them in behind him as well. 

Neiro puts something on the door, little lights flash red. “Might want to stand back My Lord.”

All three of them move away from the door and close their eyes just in time for a beep, a flash of white light. When he opens his eyes the door is gone. Jrii and Neiro step through into the security centre, attention on the people huddling away from them. He turns and leaves.

He comms the Finalizer, requests the shuttle, walks back to the bridge. As he moves he reaches out with the Force, feeling for life. He senses the cold, Dark places where the knights are, the lighter, frantically fluttering lifesigns of the people being herded from the security centre, and nothing else. Everyone else is dead. 

Bodies litter the halls, most of them in parts. He can remember killing some of them. The world shakes around him for a moment, he almost loses his grip on the Dark Side, but he endures. He draws it in close, keeps it as a wall between him and the outside. 

When the prisoners are back on the Finalizer he’ll have the corpses of the mutineers flushed into space, then he’ll have techs come aboard to see if the Rectitude can be repaired. He wonders what Hux will think. _It doesn’t matter what Hux thinks. **Of course it matters what Hux thinks.**_


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Hux on Maneshfva part of this story is rapidly spiralling out of my control. Oh well, I tell myself it's good world-building practise. Thank you for reading, as always, and for your comments and kudos. I hope you all have a lovely day, and many lovely days to come.

Hux stands beneath the midday sun dressed head to toe in white linen, loose trousers and a tunic, blaster belted around his waist, sandals on his feet. Beside him Mitaka stands, dressed the same. Behind them eight of the squad of Stormtroopers stand guarding the chest, also in white linen, but with their white breastplates strapped over the cloth. The remaining two Stormtroopers are to remain with the shuttle, to guard it until their return.

Sunny Adar approaches across the parking bay, all smiles. While they retreated to the shuttle for a quick sonic shower and to dress in their new garb the man had retreated to a nearby drinks stall. “Brothers, sisters,” the mans says, arms wide as if to encompass them, “and of course my beautiful friend. So much more fitting you look. Come, my transport is this way,” the man begins walking, heading west, before turning suddenly. “Ah, I almost forgot. Here, a gift.” The man takes something from a pouch at his waist and thrusts it at him.

He takes it reflexively, almost dropping it as Sunny Adar withdraws his hand. The present is a small, slippery parcel, wrapped in a piece of cheap linen. He unwraps it, a length of embroidered, pale seafoam silk slithers out accompanied by the tinkling of hundreds of tiny copper bells sewn to its edge. A shawl, much like the one the Twilek was wearing earlier. “I can’t accept this,” he says, trying to give it back to the man.

“No, no, my friend. I must insist,” the dark-haired man raises his hands, refusing to take the shawl. “The sun is too hot for skin as pale as yours.”

“Then what about my Stormtroopers?” he gestures back at the blonde and blue eyed FN-1996, the pale and brown haired FN-2311, the freckled face of the mousy FN-2091. “Or Lieutenant Mitaka?” 

Sunny Adar shrugs “We can find linen for them, a face as beautiful as yours deserves silk.”

“No,” he snaps, once more trying to give the shawl back. “If they deserve linen I deserve linen, and if I must have a shawl I can buy my own.” 

“Why buy your own when you have such a one gifted to you?” the man gestures at the object. “It is of the best quality, finest spider silk and real copper bells.”

“I do not want a gift,” he argues. Gifts imply obligation.

“That is fine,” the man says, still smiling, almost amused at this point “But you will keep it beautiful, because I will not take it back, and if you do not accept it I will not take you to see my very great friend.”

His fist clenches in the silk. He wants this over with. “Fine.”

Sunny Adar relaxes, and it is only then that Hux realizes how tense the man had become. “But, you are right my friend,” the man says, gesturing at Mitaka and the Stormtroopers “I did not think earlier. We will stop and get shawls for all your friends as well. Pale as you or not, we do not want them burning in the hot sun.”

He takes a deep breath, trying for calm. “Lead on,” he snaps, gesturing ahead.

“As you wish.”

The man leads them back into the marketplace, back to a stall near the shop where they bought their clothes earlier. “Quality is better, prices are better for linen shawls here, not clothes,” he says when Hux looks at him, questioning, “Clothes are better, prices are better where we went before. If you want silk, well, you go somewhere else. If you want spider silk, somewhere else again. If you want a shawl like the one I got for you, that is a very different kind of shop.”

The man gestures at the shopkeep, a slender woman with saffron coloured tattoos on her face, and asks for nine linen shawls. As he does FN-2188 steps forward, “Actually,” she corrects, “eight. We-” she gestures between herself and FN-2439 “-would like to know where to buy a silk shawl.”

“Ok,” Sunny Adar says, glancing between the two Stormtroopers and Mitaka. “Eight it is. How much would you like to spend?”

Hux feels a bit like he’s going mad. This whole business seems like such a waste of time and money. The mission was to go down to the moon, drop off some stone, get paid, go to the Copper Bell Cantina, show a man some items, hopefully get paid again, and go back to the Finalizer. Now, hours later he is standing under the hot sun in a huge marketplace while two of his Stormtroopers discuss buying ornamentation for their lover, one of his officers, before they get led off into the desert by a strange man who keeps calling him beautiful.

“-like this,” Sunny Adar is saying. The silk shawl is suddenly snatched out of his hand and draped around his shoulders and over his head before he registers what is happening. He splutters. The copper bells tinkle across his brow. “Ah, my beautiful friend, it suits you more than I had hoped.”

The Stormtroopers clumsily mimic the man’s movements, draping white linen awkwardly around their own heads. He transfers the credits, another 160 down, to the shopkeep. “Are we done now?” he asks, hand inching up to remove the shawl, before hesitating. The silk does seem to provide some protection from the heat, though he cannot see why it would. He leaves it.

“One more stop, for a silk shawl worth about sixty credits.”

Mitaka looks embarrassed. FN-2188 and FN-2439 look determined. He feels defeated. “Ok. One more stop.”

The next stall is tiny, only big enough to house the shopkeep, a slender being of a species he hasn’t seen before. Four eyed and slightly insectoid, with dark green, iridescent skin. The creature pulls shawl after shawl out and places it on the counter, each of the four eyes moving independently, keeping an eye on all of them. 

FN-2188 and FN-2439 peer at the counter, glancing back at Mitaka and then back at the shawls. “This isn’t necessary,” the Lieutenant says, voice soft. The man’s dark eyes glance back at him “I really think we need to hurry up.”

“Let us buy you something Dopheld,” FN-2439 says, voice equally soft. “When will we get another chance?”

He averts his gaze, eyes going back to the chest being guarded by the rest of the Stormtroopers. He doesn’t feel like General Hux. He doesn’t feel like anyone. For a moment he feels entirely empty. 

Eventually they chose a shawl of a pale bluish grey, lightly embroidered in white, with a cluster of three little copper bells on each of the four corners. He watches them pay, and then FN-2439 takes the cloth and drapes it gently over Mitaka under FN-2188’s watchful gaze. The Lieutenant’s hands go up, grasping the Stormtrooper’s wrists. For a second, just a second, all three of them look agonized. 

“Very nice choice my friends,” Sunny Adar’s deep voice breaks the moment. “Now come, my transport awaits.”

They follow the man as he leads them through the narrow, winding streets, beneath cloth awnings and between stone shops. Everywhere around people call out to customers, but oddly enough no one calls out to them. He sees merchants eyes catch on their escort and then slide off them as if they are not there. The golden-sashed guards nod to Sunny Adar as they pass. Even the beggars avoid them, not even beginning their approach, simply lurking in the shade between stalls and eying them warily.

Sunny Adar leads them towards the western cliffs, to a large gate carved into the stone. There are guards either side, very well armed, who simply nod and let them pass. Inside, in the cool space carved back into the rock, sits a shiny white transport. Part shuttle and part sand-skiff, the bottom deck enclosed, well-armoured, but the top open to the elements underneath a green copper awning. 

“The view is best from the top,” Sunny Adar says. “Will you sit with me my friend, so I can show you the wonders of the desert? Your soldiers can stay below with the chest if you want, it will be cooler down there.”

He hears a snorting sound behind them, and then Mitaka’s voice, quiet, almost as if he doesn’t want to be overheard. “ _Wonders of the desert;_ do you use that line often?”

“Ah my friend,” Sunny Adar rounds on the Lieutenant, still smiling. “Why don’t you stay with us, you and your two dear companions?”

“I think we will,” FN-2188 replies for the Lieutenant. “If that’s ok with you Sir?” She looks at him. He nods. This is all beyond him.


	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More Hux again. Engineering isn't my strong suit, so please forgive me for making things up. 
> 
> Thank you, as always, for reading. I hope you enjoy.

The transport skims lightly over the white sand under Sunny Adar’s expert control. The man sits on the upper deck, at the prow of the ship, controlling the vessel from a simple touch pad. He sits beside the man, under the shade of the copper awning, eyes on the horizon. A little way behind them are Mitaka and the two Stormtroopers lounging on a bench seat, speaking softly to each other. He knows, if he glances back, that FN-2188 will still have her hand on her blaster.

The desert is a mindboggling expanse of nearly pure white sand, glittering under a nearly pure white sun. Every now and then they pass an expanse of equally white rocks, or perhaps a vein of greenish sand rich in copper, but otherwise there is nothing on which to fix the eye. The heat haze obscures the horizon, making shapes out of the juncture between earth and sky that turn out to be nothing as they get closer.

He sips a ceramic mug of water mixed with the juice of the green-skinned pink fruit from earlier, adritj fruit apparently, the first trees imported generations ago to thrive under the blistering sun. 

They have been travelling for almost four hours now. At first Sunny Adar tried to engage him in conversation, but eventually the man gave up. He doesn’t feel like talking. He feels like sipping on his drink, getting through this, and returning to his ship. 

The little copper bells on his shawl tinkle pleasantly in the wind of air resistance. Every now and then he starts to feel self-conscious for still wearing it, a hand raises to push it off his head, but before he does he drops it again. He’s still not sure why, it is only a length of cloth, but the thing does seem to offer some protection from the heat.

Out here in the desert the heat is blistering. Again it is dry heat, like at Ememri Ri’s palace, but away from any life, anything other than reflective white, there is nothing to temper it. It is nearly unbearable. He can feel a headache begin to claw at his temples. He sips more of his drink.

“Ah,” Sunny Adar says, slowing the skiff. The man points at something in the distance, over on the port side. “You see that movement my friend, it looks like gold glistening in the sun, those are sunsnakes.”

He peers where the man is pointing. There is something, a couple of somethings, out there, skimming across the desert and leaving great vees in their wake in the sand. They glow under the sun, seeming metallic. Long bodies ranging from electrum to gold, splotched with richer patches of copper.

“I see them,” he says. “They are what the desert’s named after?”

“Yes they are,” the man replies, getting the craft moving again. “Full grown they are six times the length of a man, a _tall_ man, with a venom that can melt the flesh from your bones. Very dangerous my friend.”

He watches the creatures continue on their way until one suddenly stops, swerves, buries its head in the sand and burrows down to disappear in seconds. “They’re beautiful,” he says, voice soft. “I imagine they’re ambush predators?”

“It seems that beauty is not all you’re gifted with my friend,” he glances over, censorious, but the man just smiles at him. “Indeed they are. They burrow down into the sand and if you do not know the way to spot them then-” he claps his hands together suddenly “-like that, you are dead. It is good you are with me, the sunsnakes and I, we understand each other.”

He contemplates asking the man if that means he is an ambush predator as well, but considers it might not be politic. They fall back into silence. He keeps his gaze on the sand in case he spots another sunsnake. He thinks he would like to get a closer look at one. 

After a while one of the illusions on the horizon resolves itself into a transport ship half buried in the sand, a fine scatter of debris around it. The ship was obviously not in the best condition even before it crashed, the signs of cheap repairs scarring its hull. “What is that?” he asks.

“A slave ship,” Sunny Adar replies, something in the man’s voice makes him glance over. He has stopped smiling. “It crashed here almost sixty years ago. My grandmother and my mother were on board.”

“Slaves?” 

“Yes. This was back in the days of the Republic, the Republic before the last Republic, near the end of the Clone Wars. Slavery thrived in this sector of the Galaxy back then.” The man pauses, he doesn’t say anything, just waits to see what Sunny Adar might add. Eventually the man starts speaking again, a pensive look still on his face. “My mother was just a child. My grandmother pulled her from the wreckage and walked hand in hand with her across the desert to Nfevrum. They were some of the few to survive, most others perished in the crash, under the sun, or because of the sunsnakes. They were reborn out here, and I was born of them.”

There is nothing he can say to that. There is no point to saying he is sorry that such a thing happened. Sorry will not plaster over it. Guilt rises in him, he glances back at FN-2188 and FN-2439, then away, back to the horizon. They both fall to silence. Behind them Mitaka and the Stormtroopers are also quiet.

They drive on. He sips his drink. Eats some more of the adritj fruit when Sunny Adar’s droid, a small copper coloured thing on spidery legs called I-NN6, fetches it. 

“Ah!” Sunny Adar hisses, pulling the skiff to a sudden stop. 

“What?” he asks, turning to the man, but he can already see the problem. Over on the starboard side a small cargo skiff, nowhere near as fancy as the vessel they are in, has overturned, spilling barrels, clay amphorae, parcels wrapped in linen, and rolls of cloth on to the sand.

“Can you lend us a hand brother?” the captain, a young woman with brown hair and a face more freckles than not, calls up to them. “The stabilizers are going on this kriffing thing again.”

“I told you to take it to Mar Nyuka to get fixed, sister,” Sunny Adar calls back, getting to his feet and bounding over to climb down and help. He stands, going to help, but the man holds up a hand “Wait here my friend, the sands are treacherous for those that don’t know them.”

“I did take it to him, brother,” the woman calls as Sunny Adar slides down his vessel to join her. “He said they will need to be replaced. That he will have to order in the parts, because it is not so simple for my skiff, and it will be next week at the soonest. Business cannot stop that long, so I got him to do a quick repair for now. Not much of a repair it turns out.”

He walks over to the starboard edge, watching them work together to try and flip the skiff back over. It takes them a couple of tries, but soon the skiff flips and skids away from them a little distance across the sand. “Pile of scrap!” the woman snaps, rushing after it. She manages to get it back under control with the engines idling. Both she and Sunny Adar stand, looking at it, as it lists slightly pathetically to the side.

“Do you want me to come down there and try and fix it?” he calls out, not sure why he’s volunteering.

“Do you know anything about repairing vessels beautiful one?” the dark-haired man asks, peering up at him.

He thinks about replying that he designed Starkiller Base, a feat far more complicated than fixing a simple sand-skiff, but even brushing against the memory makes him shudder. Anyway, he does not want people looking at him and seeing _Starkiller._ “I know some,” he replies, moving towards the ladder.

The woman and Sunny Adar look at each-other. The woman shrugs. “Ok my friend, but be careful where you step.”

He climbs down, feet skidding a little until he gains his balance. The heat from the sand scorches through the base of his sandals, making him curl his toes away. Carefully he picks his way over, almost falling once or twice until he gets the hang of it. The sand is odd, very slippery. He wonders at its composition.

The skiff’s stabilizers are almost entirely burnt out, furthermore retrofitted from an entirely different vessel. A close inspection tells him the thing is patched together from whatever the person who built it could find, some of the parts old enough to be pre-Imperial. He does what he can by tweaking wires and applying insulation patches, and eventually the skiff sits nearly level and only bobs and weaves a little bit. “It won’t last long,” he sighs, looking at the mess that is the vessels systems. “You really do need to have them replaced.”

“Thank you brother,” the woman says, grasping his hand in her callused one and shaking it exuberantly. He waves off her gratitude and carefully extracts his limb. His fingers are oily from the engine, and dusty from the sand. He wants to wash them.

“I will help you reload,” Sunny Adar tells the woman. “Are you delivering to the Palace?” 

She shakes her head. “To Wahuir Djvat, he is trying to refurbish his mother’s palace. I hear he wishes to marry.”

“Do you need help reloading?” he asks, watching as they begin shifting amphorae and barrels.

“No, that is ok beautiful,” the man says, shaking his head. “You have done more than enough. Someone like you is not made for hard labour.”

He scoffs. The man seems either truly delusional or is still labouring under the impression complimenting him will somehow lower his defences and make him accept a lower price for Snoke’s treasures. Still, his head hurts and he doesn’t feel like lugging around heavy things, so he’s content to stand by and watch. 

He is very strong, Sunny Adar, he easily picks up barrels and carries them on his shoulder to the skiff. They must be heavy, the vessel bobs in the air every time one of them is loaded. The woman is strong too, but he finds his eyes lingering on the man, the way he moves, the way his muscles bunch and shift. 

He is reminded, all of a sudden, of being fourteen and watching some of his father’s cadets wrestle. All of them older than him by a year or so. He had not wanted to join in, he would when Brendol made him, but he had never enjoyed the physical competition and their larger, heavier bodies had made him feel odd when they pinned him down. He’d learnt strategies to win, learnt how to fight dirty to avoid the sensation, terrified his father would see it in him. 

There was one boy, taller than him, with dark skin and nearly black eyes, who would smile at him sometimes and grind his face into the floor at others. He can’t remember his name. His heart used to flutter in his chest whenever he saw him.

_Did Snoke see it in him? Was that why the man had made use of him the way he did? Was there some part of him that had welcomed it?_

A flash of movement. A hint of gold out of the corner of his eye. He turns, facing away from the two vessels. A nose peeking out of the sand, as wide across as the length of his forearm. He eyes the thin, slitted nostrils, puffing open to exhale stale air. Around them he can see large, keeled scales, silver at their peak, shading to rich, yellow gold. 

The nose moves, shifts back and forth, the creature it’s attached to burrowing up out of the sand slowly. The white sand falls away, revealing hints of gold, of copper. More keeled scales. A shape emerging. Then green, green like the colour of the copper rooves. Eyes. The eyes of the sunsnake.

He looks at it, it looks back. He isn’t afraid. He should be afraid. It’s beautiful. He can see the fine filaments of colour radiating out from the slit pupils of its eyes, mainly green, but there is blue there, silver, gold as rich as its scales, and a faint halo of copper just around the black. 

Slowly he crouches down until they’re almost eye to eye. His head buzzes again, the headache fading. His mind fading. He feels like he is on the precipice of something, as if he could just reach out-

A noise behind him. The sunsnake startles, disappears under the sand before he can blink. He turns around, Sunny Adar is staring at him, pale faced. The woman stands behind him, a blaster clenched in her hands. For a long moment there is silence.

“We should get back on my transport my friend,” the man says eventually, his eyes flickering past to rest on the spot the sunsnake once was. “It is getting late.”

He stands, lets the man usher him back to the transport. The woman watches him, standing next to her fully loaded sand-skiff, a strange look in her eyes. He looks up as he begins the climb back onboard, Mitaka, FN-2188 and FN-2439 peer down at him, eyes wide, faces as grave as the woman’s.


	11. Chapter 11

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Kylo, Kylo's life choices and Kylo's past. Also there's smut in this chapter.
> 
> Thanks again for reading, leaving kudos and all your kind comments.

Hux had commed again sounding strained, seeking confirmation of the transfer of credits from the Hutt. They’d gone through. Now he has his own credits to gather. He leaves the Finalizer guarding the Rectitude as techs work to repair her, it won’t take long, they said, no more than a day or so. He leaves his Knights guarding both ships with orders to leave the crew in peace unless there’s signs of further treachery. He takes a short-range shuttle and two squads of Stormtroopers back to the Fva Amuir system, to Telbenefva. 

The buyers of Snoke’s possessions had been irritated, short with him for missing the meetings, but he’d been firm. If they still wanted a chance to peruse and purchase he’d be on the planet soon, if not he could always find someone else. It was satisfying how quickly their posturing had caved under the weight of their greed. 

The Dark sits uneasily with him after the events on the Rectitude. He keeps remembering Rey calling him a monster, only sometimes Rey becomes Hux. He sits in the plush chair of the shuttle, stares out the porthole. The temptation to reach for her comes again. This time he lets it. He closes his eyes-

She stands before him, frowning. Like always he cannot see her surroundings. _“What is going on? We are getting the strangest reports- please, Ben-”_ he breaks the connection. Sucks in a gasp. She let him, she let him- but no. She only let him in because she must have heard something about trouble in the First Order. She wants to use the knowledge. She’ll take it to his mother and they’ll destroy him.

The shuttle begins to shake. Warning beeps come from the cockpit. He forces himself to ease his grip on the Dark.

The planet up ahead is green, lush. Tall buildings peek out above thick jungle, made of white stone with copper rooves, both imported from Maneshfva. His mind flickers to Hux. His mind flickers to Snoke on top of Hux. He cannot disconnect the two thoughts in his mind.

He feels distressed. He feels weak. Once more he thinks of Rey calling him a monster. She’d say it and mean it now. The Dark, he needs the Dark, if he lets go for even one second everything will fall apart.

The shuttle docks in the parking bay of the enormously wealthy Hotel Grindjura, where he’ll be meeting all three prospective buyers. He disembarks, leaving a couple Stormtroopers to guard the shuttle. The others follow him, several carrying large paintings wrapped in cloth, another a statue made of chryselephantine almost as large as she is, and two more chests much like the one Hux took to Maneshfva. 

Once they leave the garage and enter the hotel proper things change from plain, grey concrete, to a glimmering and gilded world clad in stone from a hundred other worlds. The staff are uniformed in green, pleasant, smiling, the patrons wear silks and the finest linens, many so delicate he can see the lines of their bodies beneath. Everywhere there is wealth displayed, unsubtle.

No one stops them, bothers them, or even asks questions as they stalk down the shiny halls and up the elevator to the hotel bar on the penultimate floor, where the meetings are going to take place. He wonders at this planet, where Force users and Stormtroopers carrying treasure seem to be a sight beneath people’s notice. He can’t conceive it would be so on any Core world, where taking the treasures you intend to sell to the meeting with the buyer would be considered vulgar. The people here seem a whole lot more straightforward. 

As he steps out into the bar his feet land once more on tiles made of slick, black stone. The same stone from Snoke’s quarters. He notes, absently, that they are not laid nearly so well. He can spot the joins with his eyes, even see hints of black grout between them. 

He finds a seat looking out onto the balcony which protrudes into the jungle canopy. It is getting dark, the sunset a deep pink, almost purple, which casts colour through the window to reflect on golden furniture and the black floor. Sitting in a high backed chair upholstered in gold silk, surrounded by his soldiers and his treasures, he almost feels like a king, the lord and ruler of some small world. 

Beautifully dressed beings drift by, some as beautiful as their clothes, some with only finery as their claim to the aesthetic. He watches a woman in a gauzy dress of lavender silk swish by, the fabric not even attempting to conceal the dark skin of her breasts. She smiles, knowing, glancing over to meet his eyes. For a moment he considers fucking her, but then the first buyer arrives.

Things go well. One after the other the buyers arrive, inspect the goods, do a bit of posturing but give up under the implacable weight of his gaze, agree to his price, transfer the credits, take their new possessions. It is all over after a couple of hours. 

He watches the last one, a skinny little being with eerily long fingers, walk off carrying the chryselephantine statue. The thing is nearly twice her height and the way she’s holding it means those long fingers are cupping the statue’s full breasts. Snoke had a surprisingly large amount of erotica amongst his collection, even if a lot of it was the type of erotica respectable people insist is only ‘art.’

He should be getting back to the Finalizer, but he finds himself wanting to linger. This is the first time in a long time he has been able to distance himself from all of it, to just be a man, not the Supreme Leader, or Kylo Ren leader of the Knights of Ren, or Kylo Ren crawling around an island trying to find purpose, or Kylo Ren under Snoke’s command. He’s just a man. Just a rich, important man. 

A gesture and a waiter comes over. He orders a drink, something expensive. The Stormtroopers stay where they are, flanking him. He gazes out onto the world beyond the balcony, dark now, stars in the sky as well as two moons. Nocturnal animals and birds call in the distance. 

The drink burns on the way down, softer, sweeter, _different_ to the feeling of the Dark Side. He feels someone watching him, he looks over. A young man with pale skin, reddish hair a little darker than Hux’s, barely dressed in peach coloured silk. The man flutters his eyes, lowering his gaze as if shy. A brush over his mind, it’s calculated. He’s pleased to be looked at by someone so obviously powerful.

He gestures to the man, inviting him to join him. The man rises from his own chair and sways over, every move a calculated seduction. His eyes are darker than Hux’s too, plain blue and not that indeterminate sea colour. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“If you’d like,” the man purrs, leaning in close so silk slips aside and he gets a good look at pale skin. He spots freckles on the man’s shoulders, his eyes go back to his face, and freckles there under makeup. Hux doesn’t have freckles, he mustn’t be in the sun long enough to form them. 

He gestures for the waiter again. The redhead orders something he’s never heard of, something very expensive. He’s younger than Hux too, no older than his mid-twenties. Hux has fine lines around his eyes, his brow, from too much frowning.

“Do you want to go to bed with me?” he asks. 

The man smiles. “If you’d like.”

He dismisses the Stormtroopers back to the shuttle and gets a room, 4000 credits a night, but he can afford it now. The man slinks inside, admiring the stone-clad walls, the floor to ceiling windows, the large balcony, the bed almost as big as Snoke’s. He wraps his arms around Hux’s, no the _man’s_ waist and pulls him close. He’s shorter than Hux too, short enough that the man can tuck his head under his chin.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

“Lem,” the man murmurs, pushing his robes aside to kiss his throat. “Lem Umur.” It’s not. He can read the shadows of another name in the man’s mind, Krae Follarin, but the man thinks his chosen name sounds sweeter, so Kylo Ren doesn’t quibble.

“I’m going to fuck you Lem,” he pulls at the peach silk, trying to ignore how awkward the words make him feel. “Would you like that?”

“Oh,” Lem sighs, looking up at him with blue eyes. “Yes.” The man is wondering if he’ll be any good, if he’ll get anything out of this encounter, whether he’s looking for a lover and if he is how well kept that lover would be. He wonders if Hux thought things like that with Snoke. He wonders what Hux was getting out of their relationship.

The peach silk rips beneath his hands. There is a moment of double thought, of delight at his strength and annoyance at the damage, before Lem moans, pushes against him. He strips the man to the skin, his mind stuck on how different his body is to Hux’s. He remembers the island, those last moments, Hux totally bare to his eyes. So slender, so finely boned, skin pale and scarred in places. 

Lem is a little softer, his shoulders wider, his skin smooth and unmarred. His nipples are paler, more brown than pink, as is his cock. He’s bare, hairless between his legs and beneath his arms, unlike Hux’s soft copper curls. This is getting ridiculous. 

He leans down to kiss the man, who squeaks and grabs at his shoulders. “Get on the bed,” he orders, pushing him gently. “Prepare yourself for me.”

The man does, making a production out of it, every movement a swaying tease. He strips off his own boots, his robes, his trousers, his underwear. Lem is lying back, fingers buried up to the knuckle in his own ass, slick taken from the bedside table where it is provided by the hotel. The man is moaning, breathy and affected, though he can feel pleasure in his mind. Hux would be quiet. He would only moan when he couldn’t hide from his pleasure.

He slinks onto the bed, moving between slender legs. Lem pulls out his fingers, grabs at him. He thinks of kissing the man again, but finds he doesn’t want to. He looks down, meets those disappointingly blue eyes. The image of another man, tall and fair briefly crosses Lem’s mind. A sense of loss. Resentment. Longing. 

He pulls back, tugs on the redhead until he’s straddling his lap. “I want you to ride me.”

The man maneuvers into place, sinks down, hissing at the burn. He’s big, bigger than the man had expected. Lem’s not sure if this feels good. He raises a hand, gently strokes it down a pale, freckled side. The man’s body eases, he adjusts, he begins to move.

They fuck slowly at first, but soon they fall into the rhythm, getting faster and faster. Lem starts out moaning, theatrically, but as the redhead gets distracted by pleasure the moans come softer, more breathy. The fair man of before keeps flashing across Lem’s mind. He tries not to think of Hux. _Hux in Snoke’s lap._ Eventually he’s not thinking at all. He grabs at Lem, hands digging into the soft flesh of his hips and thighs. A thrust up, one, two, almost unseating the redhead, and he comes. Lem squeaks, hand working desperately between his own thighs, comes just after. 

He collapses backwards onto the bed, gently pushing at the redhead until he flops down onto his side beside him. They pant. Lem feels like crying, his mind won’t stop lingering on the fair man. He feels tired. He lets himself sleep.

_He sees Rey, “You are a monster,” she’s saying, again and again. At the same time he sees his mother, she’s turning away from him and hanging her head. There’s Luke, Luke shouting “What are you doing?!” His father, an amused look on his face “Redheads, huh?” Rey saying “You are a monster, his mother turning her back on him, Luke shouting “What are you doing?!” his father saying “Redheads, huh?” Rey saying “You are a monster, his mother turning her back on him, Luke shouting “What are you doing?!” his father saying “Redheads, huh?” Rey saying “You are a monster, his mother turning her back on him, Luke shouting “What are you doing?!” his father saying “Redheads, huh?” Rey saying “You are a monster, his mother turning her back on him, Luke shouting “What are you doing?!” his father saying “Redheads, huh?” Rey “You are a monster,” his mother’s back, Luke “What are you doing?!” his father “Redheads, huh?” Rey saying “You are a monster, his mother turning her back on him, Luke shouting “What are you doing?!” his father saying “Redheads, huh?” Rey “You are a monster,” his mother’s back, Luke “What are you doing?!” his father “Redheads, huh?” Rey, his mother, Luke, his father, Rey-_

_**He’s back on the balcony, standing in front of the brown-haired man wearing the Kaf coloured robes. He opens his mouth to apologize, to say sorry for not having the time to think about the questions the man asked. The man dismisses him with a wave of his hand. He looks grave, dark eyes pinning his. The man speaks, “What happens to someone when they channel the Dark Side for too long, without ever letting it go?”** _

He wakes up. Lem is gathering his clothes off the floor. It’s still dark outside. He watches the man dress for a while, pulling peach silk back over pale skin. The redhead sighs, picking at the place where he tore the cloth.

“Let me compensate you for the damage.”

“Oh,” the thought _not a whore_ briefly flashes across the man’s mind, before acceptance. The garment was expensive. He’s in debt up to his eyeballs. The cost of living is high on the planet. “If you insist.”

They agree on 500 credits, even though Lem knows the garment is only worth 350, the man is thinking how the extra 150 can go towards the rent. He transfers the money. “Let me give you my contact details,” the redhead purrs, pressing in close “In case you’re ever planetside again.” He passes over his pad, watching fingers shorter and wider than Hux’s input the information. He knows he’ll never use it. It seems easier to agree than to say that though.

Lem lingers, contemplating trying his luck at getting him back into bed again. The final impression of their encounter is a positive one in the man’s mind, transient affection floating buoyed by physical closeness. He wants the man gone. 

He pulls on his trousers, dressed enough that he can escort the redhead to the door without worrying about flashing anyone in the hallway. Lem pets at him, pulls him into a kiss. He obliges, waiting for it to end. “See you around?” the man cooes.

“Perhaps,” he opens the door, guides the redhead out with a hand on his lower back.

“Ben?” He looks up. It’s **her,** half dressed and tottering out of a room on the opposite side of the corridor. “Oh Gods,” she breathes. “You know about the baby! I’m going to be murdered!” The last ends on a screech. She shoves the shadowy figure behind her back into the room and rushes in after, slamming the door behind her.

_Baby?_

“What baby?!” he roars, striding across the hall. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Also bear in mind that warning about Rey's parentage from Long Live the King.


	12. Chapter 12

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Back to Hux again. 
> 
> Thank you all, as always, for reading, leaving kudos and commenting.

As they approach Bo Bukwiina’s palace the sun is setting. It lies, heavy and red, on the horizon and casts eerie shadows across the sand. The rest of the journey has been spent in silence, he had no desire to speak, thoughts torn between Snoke and the sunsnake, and Sunny Adar pensive instead of smiling, his brows heavy and his eyes distant.

The palace is ringed in high walls of white stone, with guards patrolling their parapets. There are towers here and there, and on those towers cannons of a dated, but no doubt still deadly design. Buried in the sand either side of the approach he can see other weapons, some kind of ground to air missile system. This is not a good place to visit uninvited.

At the gate, a massive thing made out of wide planks of pale wood, guards peer at them. They too are wearing gold-silk sashes over their armor. They spot Sunny Adar and wave them through, no questions asked. 

Inside the sun is setting on a green land. Fields, orchards, vineyards, pastures stretch out in all directions. In the distance he sees structures, storage facilities of some kind. There are beings of a myriad of species walking in clumps towards a second wall, equally as high as the first, going home for the night. He can hear water pumps again, a heavy, bass thwumpthwumpthwump, and see the rooves of massive cisterns in a row up ahead, just in front of the other wall.

Again they are waved through the gate without question. Inside they find themselves amongst outbuildings, probably more storage, on a short road to a shorter, more ornate wall with a large, well carved gate. There are still guards here, still with yellow sashes, that still wave them through after a glance at their escort.

Then they are in the courtyard in front of the palace. The road approaching it is bracketed by tall, flowering trees. Either side he sees grass, flowering bushes, vines, fountains splashing water into the air. There are people, beings walking across the lawn to the building up ahead, most of them workers from what he can gather.

The palace itself is at least six times as large as the one owned by Ememri Ri, a massive confection of white stone and lacquered copper, every one of its many floors ringed in covered parapets and balconies, from which hang thousands of glass windchimes. The red light of the sunset casts uneasy shadows on the stone and reminds him of Snoke.

Sunny Adar stops the vessel near the stone steps that lead up to the Palace’s giant, copper embossed door. “We are here,” he says, all smiles once more. “My very great friend will want to see the treasures, but I will tell him he must wait if you want to get refreshed first.”

“No,” he gets to his feet, looking down into the man’s dark eyes “I want to get this over with.”

“So cold, beautiful one,” Sunny Adar says, getting to his own feet. “You must have been born on an ice world.”

The man leads them from the vessel to the entrance of the palace. The Stormtroopers, fresh from the cool of the skiff’s bottom deck stand tall and perky, ringing the chest. Mitaka, FN-2188, FN-2439 and himself must look a very different picture. He feels like he is wilting, Mitaka seems half asleep and keeps leaning against whichever of his two lovers is closest, FN-2188 has finally released her desperate grip on her blaster but she doesn’t look happy, and FN-2439 seems to be trying to grope the Lieutenant without anyone noticing. 

The door to the palace swings open and a veritable wave of life washes out. Humans and Twileks mainly, but also Rodians, Bith, Duros, Sullustans, Ithorian, Zabrak, more of the dark skinned insectoid beings from the marketplace, and others he doesn’t recognize. Children first, calling “Sunny! Sunny!” and youths twitching at shawls and silks, smiling at the man in their best attempts to be seductive. After that older people and more children and youths, those too shy to put themselves so far forward. 

Sunny Adar is laughing, greeting everyone he meets by names that flit in and out of Hux’s mind without ever making an impression. He ignores the flirtations of the youths, and some of the older people, rustling one particularly forward girl’s hair and making her squawk. “Come, come my friends,” the man cries, looking back at the awkward cluster they make amongst all this familiarity. “This way, my very great friend is waiting to speak with you.”

He follows the man, Mitaka and the Stormtroopers following him after a moment’s pause. As they step inside the palace the heat dissipates and they find themselves comfortably cool. The walls and floor are made of the same white stone, but the walls are decorated either by paintings and tapestries or by scenes painted over a plaster finish. Some are of figures, dancing, moving, engaged in religious worship, but others are fantastical landscapes, beautifully detailed, of worlds he has never seen- if they exist at all. Behind him he can hear the chatter of the palace’s inhabitants, but they linger back, no longer crowding close to speak with Sunny Adar. 

The man falls into step beside him. “Here my friend,” he says, a flash of movement reaching out and flicking the shawl off his head to rest on his shoulder. “We are far from the sun now.” He flinches at the imposition, glares, but the man seems unperturbed.

They pass through countless halls, all the time moving deeper into the palace, away from doors and windows. It is cooler here, the difference enough after an afternoon in the hot sun that he feels himself shiver. The drop in temperature tugs at his headache, worsening it instead of soothing it.

Eventually Sunny Adar stops them in front of a large, copper door inscribed with detail so fine and ornate it takes his eyes a moment to focus on any one part of it. It looks to be the illustration of a journey, or perhaps a lifetime, events in the experience of one tiny little figure who is repeated again and again across the door’s surface in different situations. Often the figure stands between two sunsnakes, rearing up and facing away to strike at their enemies.

Sunny Adar knocks three times on a round plate, free of decoration, at the part where the two doors join and calls out “My very great friend, are you there? I have brought the treasures for you to see.”

Bang. Bang. Bang. The sound of the knocks, deep and hollow, echoes a little in the air. 

“Come in, my dear boy,” a deep voice echoes back out.

The man pushes open the door, revealing a shadowy room beyond, and steps inside, gesturing for Hux and the others to follow. Light filters down from somewhere up above. The sound of water splashing dances lightly in the air. The corners remain in shadow, but he can see glimmers of precious metals, precious stones, the gleam of frames around pictures, the half-seen shape of sculptures.

Inside there is a massive platform, somewhere between a couch and a bed, thickly padded and clad in silks. On the platform is a Hutt, huge, larger than any Hutt he has ever seen before, but also older than he thought a Hutt could get. The being’s skin is wrinkled and dry looking, patches of purplish grey on faded green. His eyes are still golden, but milky, the film of cataracts dulling their gleam. Bo Bukwiina breathes heavily, as if every inhale and exhale is the greatest of chores, and moves slowly, raising his heavy head to look at them with pleasant welcome. “Come friends of my friend, let me see what you have brought me,” he says in perfect galactic standard.

They approach, he gestures for the Stormtroopers to deposit the chest in front of the platform and then to fall back. He stays beside it, meeting the Hutt’s gaze. “You must be the General Hux,” the Hutt says, watching him placidly. “You are as I imagined when my friend described you to me. You should sit,” a languorous gesture of a giant hand, and suddenly Sunny Adar is there with a fatly padded stool upholstered in green silk. For a moment pride makes him want to refuse, but he feels exhausted. He glances from the man to the Hutt before taking the seat, sinking in to its softness. “I can see your head aches from the sun,” the Hutt says. “I will get someone to fetch something for it.”

“It’s alright, I’m fine,” he says, trying to wave off the offer.

The Hutt ignores him, gesturing slowly. A yellow skinned Twilek seems to materialize from the shadows. “Something for our friend’s head, and water for everyone.” The Twilek nods, disappears from wherever he appeared from.

“You stay, you rest,” the Hutt says, eyes leaving him to look at the chest by his feet. “My friend will show me the things you have brought, if you do not object.”

“If that’s what you want,” he says, feeling too tired to try and wrest control of this situation right now.

Sunny Adar opens the chest and begins bringing its contents to the Hutt. The being examines them, turning things over in his large, slow hands, and making comments in Huttese. Sunny Adar replies in the same language, a language of which he knows next to nothing. From what he can tell things are going well, but they could just as equally be calling the things rubbish and discussing how best to kill their guests and what to do with their bodies.

The Twilek returns just as suddenly as last time, carrying a tray with finely blown glasses full of water with blocks of ice floating in them. The man serves him first, then Mitaka, then seems to randomly select several of the Stormtroopers before distributing the glasses amongst the rest. He sips his water, wincing a little at the cool, and watches until the man is done. 

“Here, Sir,” a voice by his elbow makes him start. He whirls around to find a young male Zabrak, yellow and black, holding out a box. He peers at it. It looks like a standard mild pain stim. He hesitates, picks it up, examines the sealed packaging. Everything from the writing to the little holographic label seems legit. He glances at Sunny Adar and Bo Bukwiina, engaged in conversation about an erotic scroll. Taking out his pad he scans the stim using a counterfeit detection program. It beeps, shows green. He glances back at the two males. If it kills him it kills him, he supposes, it would hardly be any great loss. He uses the stim, sighing when the snare around his temples seems to loosen. Nothing more happens. He doesn’t feel light-headed. He doesn’t drop down dead. He feels a bit foolish.

The Zabrak takes the used stim from him, a look part way between amusement and censure on his face. “Ch-ch,” the Twilek hisses, gesturing for the Zabrak to stop lingering and to follow him out of the room. 

“Your treasures are as my friend described,” Bo Bukwiina says as the Zabrak and Twilek scurry away. “I will purchase them all.”

“Do you want to negotiate the price?” he asks, attention back on the deal.

“No,” the Hutt says, “I am happy to pay the price your Supreme Leader asked.”

Irritation sparks inside of him. He wonders what they are playing at, if they simply enjoy wasting people’s time. Perhaps it is a show of power, to drag him out into the desert, simply to show they can, because he needs the credits and can’t say no. “Ok,” he says, watching his tone. “I’ll arrange for you to transfer the credits.”

It goes smoothly from there, a huge sum of money changing hands without even the slightest wince from the Hutt. He thinks of fuel, rations, munitions, weapons. Months, if not years, of time bought for a few hours of annoyance. When he thinks of it like that the price doesn’t seem so high.

Excusing himself he walks to a dark corner of the room, finding himself standing next to a small copper fountain. Decorating the rim he sees sunsnakes, picked out with delicate gilding. He contacts the Finalizer, gets confirmation the credits have gone through. It is done. In the morning they will return to Nfevrum, then back to the ship.

He glances back over. Both Sunny Adar and Bo Bukwiina are watching him, contemplative. “Come my friends,” the dark-haired man says, “let me show you to your rooms for the night, and then the feast.”


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kylo again.
> 
> Thank you all for reading, as always, you're all great. I'll just say that if some of you jump ship when you work out what I'm getting at there's no hard feelings.

“WHAT BABY!?” he slams his fist against the door. Inside he can hear her screaming hysterically. He can also hear a man’s voice struggling to say something, sounding as if he is being shaken back and forth. He reaches for the Dark, draws it close, and blasts the door inwards. Behind him a flash of peach silk, Lem Umur fleeing. “Tell me what you mean!”

Her dress has fallen most of the rest of the way off. She’s clinging to an older humanoid’s shirt collar, shaking him, wailing as if she’s being killed. She stumbles, the humanoid stumbles, her heels are too high and she can’t regain her balance. “Let go of me, let go of me,” the humanoid is saying, trying to pry her hands off. “I want you both out of here. This is my room. This is my room. Let me go!”

“Be quiet,” he snarls, grabbing the humanoid with the Force and tearing him out of her grasp, he flings the male out into the hallway to lie slumped against the wall and uses the Force to close the door behind him. “What baby Dalie?”

“Oh no, oh no,” she’s wailing, struggling to shoulder her dress back on. “Oh, I’m going to be murdered! Help me! Help me!” He can read an odd kind of terror in her mind, mostly genuine fear but part exhilaration. Right now she feels more important than she has in a long time.

“Stop it!” he snaps, reaching for her with the Force, curling it all around her until she cannot move and giving her a little shake. “Be calm. Tell me about the baby?”

“Oh,” she whimpers. “Oh Ben. It is good to see you. Look, you’re all grown up. Oh, you got so tall. You were always such a handsome boy.”

Another shake. “The baby?”

“It’s just,” she begins, looking up at him from under lowered lids, “I don’t want you to be upset with me.”

“I’m already upset with you,” he points out, squeezing her a little with the Force so she squeaks. “If you don’t tell me I’m going to reach in and _take_ the knowledge. You know I can do that, don’t you?” He’s going to do it anyway, but it will help if she’s already thinking about it.

“Oh,” she wails. “Oh, no. Please don’t!” She really is frightened. Thoughts racing across the surface of her mind, rapidly formed and discarded plans to try and seduce him into not being angry with her, or maybe hit him on the head and flee, or maybe the hotel’s security staff will come in and rescue her and then tell her how brave she is.

“I won’t have to, if you explain yourself,” he reasons. Her mind seems so much less complicated than he would have expected. He thought her so clever, so grown up, so sophisticated when he was thirteen. It scares him to think it, but the mind he’s brushing against isn’t much more grown up than his had been back then.

“You must know,” she wails, and he wishes she’d use a different tone. “Don’t you know?” except when she does it comes out wheedling, edging into seductive.

“Dalie please,” he almost begs, shaking her again gently. “Just tell me what I want to know and then I’ll go, it will be like this never happened.”

She takes a moment to think it over. Her thoughts seem almost a little disappointed at the idea that he might leave, stop paying attention to her, stop giving her a scene she can cry about later. The fear wins out. She does want to escape him. “It’s just, you see,” she begins, lowering her gaze “I had a baby. Your baby. All those years ago.”

“What?!” he snarls. The wall above the bed cracks. The room begins to shake. The Dark. He is the Dark. He reaches for her mind, trying to prove it’s a trick. She’s telling the truth.

“Please Ben,” she whimpers, crying in real pain. His grip on her has tightened, making it hard for her to draw breath. He sees the baby there, in her arms. A tiny, wrinkled thing with baby blue eyes and sparse strands of dark hair. The memory is foggy though, everything around her seems to swim. One second the baby is the most interesting thing in existence, the next it’s like she’s forgotten she’s even holding it. Strong pain stims he reads from her, and then shame. A sense of years lost after that point. She’s never getting them back. 

He forces himself to ease the grip he has on her. “A baby, my baby? What happened to it?”

Another sense of shame, followed up with intense self-justification. “I was in a bad way. I couldn’t take care of myself, let alone a defenceless child. I made sure it went to a nice family.” The truth, _all her money spent, stuck on the planet, traded the baby for a lift off-world. In a lot of pain after the birth. She’d needed those pain stims. She’d given birth on the gods-forsaken planet, things had gone wrong and the doctor had mucked her up. She’d needed surgery to fix it, once she got back to civilization. The family had been nice, it was true, even desperate she wouldn’t have given the baby to someone who wasn’t._

“You don’t even remember what they looked like,” he hisses, probing at the blank place in her mind where details about the ‘nice’ couple should be. “You don’t even remember what _planet_ it was.”

“What was I supposed to do?” she cries, tears welling up and smudging the dark makeup around her still pretty eyes. “I wanted to give the baby to your mother, but then it all came out that your grandfather was Darth Vader and I couldn’t have that hanging over the poor thing’s head.” She’d though Leia might pay to keep her quiet, if she was lucky pay to take the baby off her hands, but when everything came out she couldn’t bear the thought that someone might find out she’d slept with Darth Vader’s grandson and by then it was too late to get rid of it. It was bad enough that her father had been a staunch Imperial, embarrassing enough, had caused enough problems when she was growing up.

“You should have stayed!” he snarls, shaking her again gently to avoid the temptation to crush her to pulp. “You should have told me! I would have taken care of it.”

“No you wouldn’t have,” she snaps. Certainty in her mind. _Men never take care of the messes they make._ “Anyway, I thought it was about time to leave. I seemed to be outstaying my welcome.” A memory of Luke, catching up to her, grabbing her by the arm to pull her aside so they could talk. Fragments, half remembered, his uncle’s voice ‘He’s got a crush on you, that’s natural-’ ‘(boys/children/young men/she can’t quite remember) get crushes-’ ‘you seem to be encouraging him-’ ‘the boy is thirteen-’ ‘only a child-’ ‘a **child** -’ _-Resentment. Thirteen was hardly a child. She’d done more grown-up things at thirteen than what she was doing with Ben-_ ‘no sign of this book you said you were writing-’ ‘time for you to (go/leave/get out/fuck off/again she can’t remember)-’

“Luke was getting suspicious,” he nods. He remembers Luke seeming happy when she’d left. He remembers hating his uncle for it at the time. “Why did you even come to the temple? And don’t tell me it was to write that book.”

“I was curious about the Jedi,” she replies, voice full of forced lightness. He doesn’t even need to touch her mind to tell she’s lying. Her thoughts tell him she wanted to marry a war-hero, Luke Skywalker seemed like the best bet, but when she got to the temple she could tell Luke was- _what? No!_

“Jedi are forbidden from forming attachments, that’s why Luke wasn’t interested in you,” he corrects.

“If you say so,” she replies, politic. A memory, clear as if it was happening at the moment, the clearest memory he’s gotten from her, tinged with the bitterest disappointment, flashes across her mind. _His father, just dropped by to say hello. Chewbacca in the background. Luke talking to Han, a slight flush to his cheeks, looking up at the other man with something, something all too recognizable in his eyes…_

“No!” he shouts, the Dark escaping his control a moment and squeezing her until something almost gives in her side. She lets out a tiny, hissed wheeze, before he drops her. She lands heavily, a pile of too skinny limbs on the expensive floor. 

He forces the thought of Luke being in love with his father out of his mind. It resists. He makes himself think about the issue at hand. “You must remember something, anything about the baby, the planet, the people you sold it to- Do you even remember if it was a boy or a girl?”

She doesn’t, not really. It’s all a blur in her mind. He can tell the planet was hot, yellow, a desert. The couple were a man and a woman, dressed practically. She thinks the baby was a boy, no, no it was a girl, or maybe it was a boy.

“You’re completely useless,” he sighs, glaring down at her crumpled form. She looks pathetic. He despises her. 

She has taken from him. Taken something he never knew he had. Taken something back before he knew such things could be taken. Taken from him back when things were good, when he had the possibility of happiness. Taken from him before Snoke took from him. A baby. A child. He is a father. A father. A FATHER, and all these years he didn’t know. All these years the Force hid it from him. _Why?_

The room starts shaking again. The window shatters, raining lumps of reinforced glass down onto the floor. Another crack appears, another, one in the floor. The door falls off its hinges.

“I’m sorry,” she says, voice small. In that moment he can tell she means it. That she’s saying it because part of her, part of her she always does her best to push down, to ignore, does feel she’s done something wrong. It doesn’t matter. _She_ doesn’t matter. She’s no one. A ghost from his past.

He loosens his grip on the Dark Side. The shaking stops. Things stop breaking. He looks down at her. He remembers what she felt like beneath him. He could kill her, so easily. He wants to. _What kind of man would that make him?_ He turns to walk away. He hesitates, looks back. In her mind there’s Ben Solo, young and vulnerable, living on as long as she does. He can’t leave that part of himself there. Two choices spool out in front of him. 

He strikes out, reaches for her with the Dark Side, closes it around her mind and grasps for every memory, every moment of himself, of Luke, of the Temple, of the baby, and rips them away. She screams, high and thin, convulsing on the ground. Then it’s done. It’s as if they never met. He leaves her there, unconscious but alive.

He feels almost calm as he returns to his room to dress. The calm lasts as he walks the halls of the Hotel, past security officers who shout and buzz around and make satisfying splats against the walls when they try to detain him. He even feels calm as he boards the shuttle and sets course for the Finalizer-

He needs to talk to someone. He wants Hux. _**WHERE IS HUX?!**_


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gave me trouble. I hope none of you are too disappointed with how it goes, and continue to enjoy it. As always thanks for reading, leaving kudos and commenting.

He sits at a long, low banquet table between Sunny Adar and Lieutenant Mitaka. The table is made out of pale wood with a coarse grain, on short legs that mean they cannot sit on chairs, but instead on fat cushions on the stone floor. To the right of Sunny Adar is an older Zabrak, probably the parent of the one who gave him the stim, and to the right of the Zabrak is Bo Bukwiina on a padded platform. 

FN-2188 sits next to Mitaka, then FN-2439, but the rest of the Stormtroopers are arrayed around the entire banquet hall, either at the head table where Bo Bukwiina takes pride of place, or at either of the two side tables that form a ‘U’ from the head table’s ends. 

“Come my beautiful friend,” Sunny Adar says, leaning close to speak with him. “Eat. My very great friend keeps a fine table, does he not?”

“He does,” he has to agree. There is more food before him than he has ever seen in his life. Meat of a dozen different varieties, cooked in a dozen different ways. Tureens of stews and curries. Bowls of cooked grain. Platters of roasted roots. Huge, squat loaves of bread. Salads of leaves and flowers. Plates with boiled vegetables. Slices of more types of fruit than he can name, some of them obviously imported from off world. Small cakes, decorated with gold leaf. Tiny morsels of things crystalized with sugar. Multi-coloured jellies wobbling apart in the heat. Whole cheeses, fresh and aged, many bigger than his head. 

He sips at a finely blown glass of adritj wine and contemplates what he can bear eating. Mitaka and his Stormtroopers don’t seem to be having any trouble, their plates are all laden and they seem to take turns serving each other anything they like the taste of. Fish stew is one thing, even flatbread he can cope with, but this is something else entirely. FN-2188 cuts a great big slice of some wobbly white cheese and plunks it down on her plate. It makes his stomach turn.

Right now he almost longs for a rationbar. 

He serves himself some fruit, the adritj and anything else that looks interesting and isn’t that overly sweet orange fruit from earlier. He nibbles at a cluster of small spheres, deep blue, which burst between his teeth and taste a bit like almonds. The bread looks ok, and maybe he could try some of the thick slices of roasted bluish-white meat that look not dissimilar to eel but are probably some kind of reptile. He could probably manage some salad, or maybe some of those boiled long yellow seedpods.

“What’s that?” he asks, pointing to the meat. He hopes it’s not sunsnake.

“Melfef,” the man replies. “A kind of large lizard that often comes to bathe in the oases. It is very good.”

He takes a piece, slicing off a fine strip and raising it to his mouth. Hesitantly he tries a piece. It is good, the texture pleasant, the meat soft, but the taste is almost too strong in the wrong kind of way. A few days of real food on the island- the kind of real food he likes personally- is inadequate to the task of overcoming the sensitivity of his palate after years of nothing but plain rationbars. Or perhaps it is just his own personal taste. Still, he manages some more, and some bread, and some vegetables, and even one of the small cakes before he has to give up, feeling nauseous. 

Mitaka is actually giggling next to him, leaning heavily on FN-2188 to talk to FN-2439. Too much wine, he thinks, observing the man’s flushed cheeks. All around him people are laughing, chatting, drinking. He can see FN-2082 flirting outrageously with a Duros, FN-1996 flirting equally outrageously with an older brother of the young Zabrak, FN-2091 flirting even more outrageously with a trio of Twileks, and FN-2515 climbing into the lap of FN-2316. By his side he feels Sunny Adar, pressing in too close.

The shawl hangs loose around his shoulders.

He sips water. He waits for it to be over. 

“You are tired beautiful one,” the man observes. It is true, he feels exhausted, he can’t deny it. “Do you wish to take a walk in the gardens? They are quite beautiful at night.”

He looks around at the hot room, the close air, the loud sounds of laughter and talking, the strong smell of the food, then he looks past, to the courtyard beyond, just visible past the balcony through the large windows at the far end of the room. It looks cool out there, cool and quiet. A glance at Mitaka, half collapsed in FN-2188’s lap, being petted by both his lovers as they talk quietly to each other. A glance at his other Stormtroopers, eating, drinking, having fun. He has no sense of danger for them, no sense that this is a trap, and anyway they all still have their blasters. He glances at Sunny Adar, the man’s dark eyes on his face. He feels uneasy. He reminds himself of the weight of his own blaster at his side. “Alright.”

The other man makes his excuses to their neighbours at the table, laughing at something the Zabrak says, while he stands. He thinks about telling Mitaka he’s taking a walk, but the man is barely conscious, and the thought of reporting his movements to his Stormtroopers feels a bit childish. They pick their way around cushions and people having a good time, some of which try to grab the dark haired man’s ankles until he convinces them to let go with a laugh and a smile.

“Do you like it, beautiful one, this Palace?” the man asks once they make it onto the balcony. He looks out onto the courtyard, the trees, the shapes of fountains splashing in the dark. 

“It is not what I’m used to.”

“I could build one like it,” the man says, leading them further from the dining room, across the stone of the balcony to stairs that lead down into the gardens. “Perhaps not so big, but big enough I think. I have more than enough money.”

He wonders why he’s being told this. Different worlds have different customs, so perhaps this kind of talk is just casual conversation here. 

“I live here though, with my very great friend, and in his palace in the city when I am there. He is a good man. Very generous. I owe him a great deal, he has done more than can be said for my family.”

He hums, showing he’s listening, even if the point of the conversation still eludes him. As they walk under the trees he can smell the perfume from their blossoms. It is sweet, light, quite pleasant. The flowers are larger than his hand, pale pink, with many ruffled petals.

“So that you understand, I will tell you that I work for him. Everyone works for him, in a way, but I work for him in a more direct way. I enforce his laws, collect his taxes, help keep the streets safe to walk for both the people of this planet and the people who come to visit. He takes thirty-five percent of everyone’s earnings to pay for his protection, for the use of his infrastructure, and I get twenty percent of that as my cut. He also has mines, both out beyond the desert and up on the planet, and I have a twenty percent share in their profits too.”

The man is just droning on about money. He cannot understand it. Still he makes another small noise to suggest he’s paying attention. Up ahead he spots one of the fountains, made of green-veined stone. The water emerges from the mouths of two large sunsnakes, cast of bronze, wrapped around each other.

“I have no family, no children, no other obligations, though sometimes I help out my friends when they are in need, but that does not take up too much of my income. I am in good health, very strong, and will probably be able to work for many more years, but even if I can’t my savings and the money from the mines will supply me with a good living.”

“I’m sorry,” he interrupts. “I am not sure what-”

Sunny Adar kisses him. The man presses in close, mouth to mouth, one hand going to cup the side of his jaw. He freezes. He feels cold, so cold. His body gets tired. He cannot move. He must cooperate. He must do what Snoke wants. He must obey. He must submit. He must- This is not Snoke. _It is._ It’s not. This is not Snoke. This is not a Dark Jedi. No one is using the Force on him to ensure his compliance. This is a man. This is just a man. This is Sunny Adar.

His fingers tingle. They feel like they belong to someone else. There’s a hand on the small of his back, travelling downwards. His blaster. He reaches for his blaster. The other hand- he needs. He needs- the man is still on him. Licking at his frozen lips. There’s a hand on his rear, squeezing. He gets his hand up. Gets it between them.

“Get off me!” he snarls, blaster coming up, safety off, pointed at the man stumbling away from him. 

“Beautiful one…?” the man breathes.

“No!” he snaps. “Don’t ‘beautiful one’ me. No! Don’t! I don’t want you to do that!”

“I’m-” the man begins, he interrupts.

“Did you think you could buy me? Is that it? Is that what all that blithering about money was about? You thought that if you told me how rich you were I’d what? Bend over and spread my legs? What do you take me for? How dare you?!” he struggles with the shawl, ripping it off his shoulders and flinging it to go fluttering to the ground under the nearest tree “And that? Is that what that was about? You thought I’d be so grateful for a scrap of silk that I’d just let you do what you want?” He’s shaking. Shaking like he’s going to come apart. Every time he blinks it feels as if Snoke is on top of him. He keeps hearing Kylo Ren calling him Snoke’s whore.

“No!” the man cries out. “No, not like that. It was a present, just a present.”

“I don’t believe you,” his teeth are chattering. He’s so cold. “I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you. I don’t believe you.” He’s going to have to sit down soon. His legs are trembling. Things are starting to feel very far away. “You can’t do this, you can’t do this, I _don’t want_ to do this.” Is that him talking? He isn’t sure.

“I am sorry!” the man is saying. “I am so sorry. I just wanted to-” he starts to approach. The world crystalizes. He squeezes the trigger, scorching the ground just in front of the man’s feet. 

What must be at least twenty guards, all with golden sashes, seem to materialise out of the night, hands on their blasters. Sunny Adar’s hand goes up to order them to stay back. “Everything is fine,” he says. “Go back to your duties.” The guards stare, the eyes of many different species fixing on him, on the blaster in his hand. “That is an order!” the man snaps. Like that they comply, melting away into the darkness.

“I am sorry for that beautiful one,” the man frowns, “They are too eager at times.”

“Don’t call me that!” he snaps. “I am not your ‘beautiful one’ or you ‘brother’ or even your ‘friend.’ I am going back inside where I am going to fetch my Lieutenant and my Stormtroopers, and then you are taking us back to the city.”

“I cannot do that-” the man begins, raising his hands and hastening to add “It is too dangerous to travel over the desert at night. Not even I would attempt it!” when his finger twitches on the trigger.

“You bastard!” he hisses. “What did you hope to gain from trapping us out here?”

“Nothing!” he cries. “Please, beautiful one- no, _General Hux,_ let me explain myself.”

“Why should I? I should just shoot you.”

“You will not leave this place alive if you do,” that smile is back, though a bit strained around the edges. “and neither will your friends.”

They stare each other down. His hand does not waver on his blaster. Sunny Adar’s smile does not waver on his face. 

“Please,” the man says, after a long pause. “Just let me explain myself. That is all I ask.”

“If I don’t want to? If I choose to return to my room instead?”

“I will follow you until you listen to me,” that smile is making his finger itch on the trigger. “I do not want this misunderstanding hanging between us.”

“Fine. Talk,” he doesn’t lower the blaster. The sooner this is over.

The smile turns rueful “I only meant to ask you to marry me.”

“What?!” it takes a moment for that to sink in. “Why?! We only met earlier today. What the hell is wrong with you?”

“I have never met someone like you before-” the man begins.

He scoffs. “I doubt that’s true.” 

“You are very beautiful,” the man protests.

He laughs, feeling more than a little hysterical. He is not. Not even Snoke thought him so. “You’re mad. Go back inside and you’ll find dozens of people more beautiful than me.”

“I have not seen these dozens. I see only you.” The man’s voice, his dark eyes, are sincere. He feels disgusted. His skin crawls at the unwanted compliment.

His mind is racing. “So you saw me, and what? Fell in love at first sight? Decided you wanted to marry me on a day’s acquaintance?”

“You understand me, I had hoped you would.”

“No,” he shakes his head. “No, I don’t believe you. Tell me, why are we here? Why did your boss demand we bring Snoke’s treasures ourselves?”

“He is old,” Sunnay Adar shrugs. “The old have their ways. It is not for us to understand them.”

A sense of something. “You are lying to me right now.”

“Please beautiful one-”

“Don’t call me that!”

“Please-”

“Tell me the truth!” he demands.

Sunny Adar deflates. The smile fades. Suddenly he is just a man, a little desperate, obviously not as in control of the situation as he would like. “You will be very angry with me, and I don’t want that.”

He gestures with the blaster. “I am already very angry with you

The man sighs. “He did so because I asked it of him.”

“Why?” he snaps.

“At first,” he begins, voice hesitant “I saw you and I thought you were very beautiful, your face, the colour of your hair, your eyes even- with some of the colour of green copper to them.” Of course, the bloody copper. Everywhere copper and everyone going on about copper. Then thinking back, he has not seen another redhead the entire time he’s been on the planet. Common as muck on Arkanis, but obviously much rarer here. “As I said, my very great friend has been very kind to me and my family. I wanted to show your beauty to him-”

His blood seems to freeze in his veins. “You wanted to give me to the Hutt?” it comes out strangled.

“No!” the man shouts, but then wavers. “No, not as such. At first I just wanted him to be able to see you, he is near the end of his life and beauty is one of his consolations. Then I spent a little more time with you, and I started to think maybe if I asked him he could help me find a way to keep you-”

“You wanted to enslave me?” he breathes out. His finger twitches on the trigger. For a moment he doesn’t see Sunny Adar, he sees Snoke. He feels a noose of the Force wrapped tight around his throat. 

“Er, perhaps,” the man ekes out, bringing him back to the moment. Sunny Adar raises his hands as if to show he is harmless, shrugs. “Slavery is not legal on this planet, my very great friend finds it distasteful, but I thought maybe I could convince him to make an exception. The things you have done, your First Order has done, it is not like you are some innocent. You have killed, _billions_ , and we all know your kind steals children, whisks them away to vanish behind white masks as if they never were.”

The truth of it sinks into him with a bite. Yes. He has killed billions. Yes he has stolen children, conditioned them into soldiers for a war old long before he was born. He thinks of some of those soldiers “What were you going to do with Lieutenant Mitaka, the Stormtroopers?”

“I was going to offer them freedom, and if they did not want it-“ a shrug “Well the desert is dangerous, people die out there every day.”

His hand is quivering a little on his blaster. He thinks of Mitaka, FN-2188, FN-2439, the way he has gotten to know parts of the people they are. He thinks of the other Stormtroopers, drinking, having fun, in so much danger. Why hadn’t he sensed they were in danger?

He takes a lurching step backwards, back towards the dining hall. “No” the man cries out. “Please do not worry for them, I have no intention of doing any of it now. I was _wrong!_ ”

“Wrong?” he breathes. The world is swirling around him once more. He feels very cold. 

“I was a fool!” the man declares, inching towards him, arms extended at his sides, voice placating. “My friend would not have gone along with my plan, no matter who you were, and then I saw you with the sunsnake-” a pause, a strange look on the man’s face, something like reverence. “They are sacred creatures. To have one come so close to you without striking- I realised what I was planning was a terrible thing. So then, then I began to hope that maybe I could convince you to stay, stay because you wanted to. Stay because you wanted to be with me.”

“And the best way you thought you could achieve that was bragging about how rich you are and then kissing me without asking?”

“I was not bragging!” the man hisses, bristling with offence “A man should not ask someone to marry him if he cannot support them!”

“A man should not do any of the things you did!” he snaps.

A rustle behind them. “Sir!” a sound of alarm. FN-2188 and FN-2439 appear, blasters drawn. “Are you alright?” FN-2188 asks.

“I am not harmed,” he answers, glaring at Sunny Adar. 

He glances at FN-2439. “Gather everyone, meet in my rooms, remain vigilant. We will all stay together tonight, in the morning our ‘friend,’” he almost spits the word “will take us back to the city. Won’t you?”

“Of course beautiful one,” the man replies, looking defeated. “I mean, General Hux.”

They back away from him, blasters still drawn. He cannot help think of all the guards, materialising out of the darkness earlier. They are outnumbered. Horribly outnumbered. “Where is Mitaka?” he asks FN-2188, voice quiet so as not to be overheard.

“In our room,” she replies, voice tinged with anxiety. FN-2439 peels away from them, heading back to do as ordered, probably going to check on the Lieutenant first. “He had too much to drink. We took him back and then realised we didn’t know where you were, we checked your room and when we didn’t find you we came looking.”

“Thank you,” he breathes, then regrets revealing his vulnerability. Then again FN-2188 was with them on the island. She saw him after the vision the mirror gave him, naked, curled up with Kylo Ren. 

“Sir, forgive the impertinence; did he do anything to you?”

He glances at her. “What makes you ask that?”

“Sorry Sir,” she grimaces, eyes still on Sunny Adar. “But that man’s been panting after you ever since he laid eyes on you, and the way he acts, the way everyone acts towards him, he’s not a man used to hearing the word ‘no.’”

“No, I imagine he’s not,” he sighs, thinking back to what the man had said. It seemed Bo Bukwiina ran Maneshfva, and Sunny Adar was his main enforcer. ‘A dangerous man,’ indeed. “No real harm was done, and we’ll be gone tomorrow.”

“If they don’t let us go?”

He smiles, rueful. “Then we will have to hope our Supreme Leader finds us worthy of avenging. I do not think that man,” he nods at Sunny Adar “will smile so much if confronted with Kylo Ren.” She snorts out a laugh. 

Sunny Adar watches them until they are out of sight. The man stands there, shoulders slumped, a grimace on his face. The last thing Hux sees of him, as they reach the balcony through which they can access their rooms, is him raising a hand and covering his eyes.

They find Mitaka in his room, groggy and leaning against the bed, but blaster in hand. FN-2188 rushes over to him and pulls him close. They exchange quiet words that he chooses not to hear. The rest filter in in dribs and drabs, all of them looking a little drunk and some of them more than a little debauched. FN-2091 virtually swaggers in and he remembers the three Twileks hanging on to her every word. 

“I’ll comm you, I’ll comm you,” he hears out in the corridor, and then “Frak, you’re gorgeous.” An annoyed grunt, familiar, FN-2439 he thinks, and a bit of a struggle and then the voice from before saying, “Come on man, let me go, I’m coming yeah, I just-” a bit more of a struggle. A sigh of irritation, and then soft moans. “So fracking gorgeous- oi!”

The door swings open and FN-2439 enters dragging FN-1996. The Zabrak tries to follow, saying “You’ll comm me? Promise you’ll comm me?”

“I will, I will,” the blond replies, trying to shake FN-2439 loose. “I’ll comm you. Every night. I promise.”

“You,” FN-2439 says, pointing at the Zabrak, who shies away from his finger, “Stay out there. You,” he shakes FN-1996, a man even taller than he is, “Get a hold of yourself.”

“Fracking killjoy,” the blond hisses, but stops struggling. The man looks back with longing until the door shuts, blocking his view of the Zabrak. 

FN-2515 and FN-2316 are the last to arrive, stealing kisses from each other as they slip in the barely open door. He spots the Zabrak, still out in the corridor, looking forlorn.

“Ok kiddies!” FN-2188 declares when everyone has gathered, looking less like a squad of Stormtroopers than a group having their night out interrupted. “Looks like we’re in hostile territory, so play time’s over.” At that they all straighten up, hands going to blasters. She glances at him, he steps forward, locks the door, nods at her. She is the squad leader.

“We’ll sleep in shifts. I want eyes on the windows and the door at all times. Ears open, hands on blasters. We’ve been promised a lift out of here in the morning, but if that doesn’t eventuate we may have to fight our way out-” he leaves her to her orders and walks to the corner, away from the door and windows. Sinking down into a squat, overstuffed chair upholstered in a patchwork of brightly coloured silks he comms the Finalizer.

The Supreme Leader isn’t there, he’s told, they’re not sure when he’ll be back. They also aren’t sure if he still has the authority to order backup down to the moon, but they’ll try to comm the Supreme Leader and check with him. He ends the call.

He sits for a long time while the Stormtroopers shuffle around behind him, before standing. “I’ll take first watch,” he says.

Nothing happens over the long hours of the night. Eventually Mitaka comes over to him and insists he tries to get some sleep. Only the thought that he might have to think his way out of there in the morning makes him agree. He curls up on an edge of the bed, large enough for all of them and then some, like everything clad in silks, and closes his eyes.

He falls into a fitful sleep. He dreams of Snoke. _Snoke choking him, slapping him, holding him down. Snoke grabbing at him when he was busy. Snoke ignoring whatever he was saying. Snoke fucking him till he bled. Snoke forcing his legs open when he had a migraine, when everything hurt to much to bear. Snoke leaving bruises on top of bruises. Snoke fucking his face so he couldn’t breathe. Snoke, Snoke, Snoke-_ He dreams and he does not want it. Does not want any of it. 

In the morning Sunny Adar knocks on the door at first light. “I wish to extend my apologies for the way I behaved last night,” is what the man greets him with, when he is let inside the room under the watchful eyes of a whole squad of armed Stormtroopers. “I have reflected on my actions, and I am ashamed of myself.”

“I don’t care,” he replies. “Have you come to take us back to Nfevrum, or are we being detained?”

“I have come to take you back,” Sunny Adar says after a moment, looking defeated. “My very great friend wishes to extend an invitation to breakfast. He is very apologetic that you have found his hospitality lacking.”

He doesn’t say that it is not Bo Bukwiina’s hospitality that’s the problem. “Tell your friend that we thank him for the offer, but we must decline. We must be getting back to our shuttle, our Supreme Leader will be wondering where we are.” In reality he doubts Kylo Ren cares, but perhaps the reminder that they report to a man more powerful than even Bo Bukwiina could ever hope to be will compel a bit more cooperation.

“Of course, he will understand,” the man’s hand twitches, as if about to reach for him, but then drops back down to his side. A sigh, the man says “If you are ready I will take you now.”

They leave the Palace with a lot less fanfare than when they arrived. Only a few people come out to watch them go, curiosity on their faces, and the Zabrak materializes to cling to FN-1996 and create a scene, but once they’ve been separated with much promise of comm-ing and a bit of shouting from the Zabrak’s mother, everyone piles onto the transport with no issues. This time they all stay together, on the top deck where they can keep an eye on Sunny Adar. 

Instead of sitting next to the man he sits with the Stormtroopers, between the sulking FN-1996 and FN-2188. Sunny Adar makes no attempt at conversation as he directs the transport away from the Palace and back to Nfevrum. The Stormtroopers talk amongst themselves, but he doesn’t feel like saying anything.

The trip takes less than half the time, the transport skimming across the sand as light as air. It seems likely that the man was dawdling the day before. The thought that Sunny Adar wanted to spend more time with him flashes across his mind, but he shakes it away. It makes him uneasy.

Soon enough they pass the crashed slave-ship, the early morning sun lancing almost green off its side. It is pleasant this early, the lack of clouds in the atmosphere allowing the heat of the day before to dissipate over night, though the warmth still trapped in sand and rock prevent it from becoming too cool. The transport skims on, racing towards the city.

Sunny Adar takes them all the way back to their shuttle, picking his way through narrow streets with ease, even though his transport is wide enough to almost scrape the walls of some of the shops. He pulls up, stops the transport, gets to his feet. They stand, moving towards the ladder to disembark. “Please!” the man calls out. “Let me speak with you, just for a moment. Alone.”

“No,” he replies. The Stormtroopers shuffle, hands going to blasters.

The man moves forward, taking something from a pouch at his belt. “Please, take it,” it’s the shawl. “I only meant it as a gift, no more.”

“I don’t want it.”

“Please beautiful one-” the man begins. He is interrupted.

“Ooh, lucky,” a voice says, filtered through a modulator. A head, masked in black emerges as its owner climbs the ladder onto the deck. “I thought I was going to have to go looking before long.”

As the figure steps onto the deck they bring cold with them. He shivers. Another one of the Knights of Ren, not one of the two he saw before being sent to the moon. 

The Stormtrooper’s shift, they reach for their blasters. So does Sunny Adar.

“You can try it if you want, I’m just not sure it’s the best idea,” the figure says.

“Stand down,” he orders. “It’s one of the Supreme Leader’s Knights.”

“Good guess pretty,” the figure says. Their voice is androgynous, as if their figure. Short and skinny, with a loose way of holding their limbs. “Neiro Ren at your service.”

“Why are you here?” he asks. His skin is crawling, as the figure walks towards him he has the oddest desire to start backing away.

“Well,” Neiro Ren begins, “Our Lord and Master wants your presence, so he sent me to fetch you.”

“It’s hardly necessary,” he says, “We’re about to get on the shuttle.”

“Well they might be,” the figure waves in the general direction of the Stormtroopers and Mitaka, “but you’re not. Orders are orders you see.”

“What do you-” he begins. The Force curls around him, lifting his feet from the deck. Sunny Adar pulls his blaster, which goes flying out of his hand and over the rail.

“Naughty,” the figure admonishes. “I’d kill you for that, but I’m not sure I have the time.” Neiro Ren darts backwards and jumps over the rail, landing lightly on the ground below in front of a familiar, high-speed two-person shuttle. He finds himself following, his body floating down towards the Knight.

“Sir!” Mitaka cries out, rushing to the ladder along with the Stormtroopers.

“It’s alright!” he calls to his troops. His skin is crawling. He feels so cold. He doesn’t want the knight turning on them. “Return to the Finalizer, that’s an order.”

He finds himself being bundled into the high-speed shuttle, watching through the front window as Mitaka and the Stormtroopers rush down the ladder. “You should listen to the man,” Neiro Ren calls out to them as he boards as well. “He’s obviously not just a pretty face.”

The next thing he knows the shuttle is taking off. He watches Mitaka, his Stormtroopers, even Sunny Adar and a collection of gold-sashed guards that appear at the man’s shouting, as they get smaller and smaller and smaller. He can’t move. The Knight still has him wrapped in the Force. He’s helpless.


	15. Chapter 15

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've got writer's block, sigh, and honestly I was surprised I even managed to get this done. I'm afraid the pace of my updates is going to have to slow a bit, even if I can overcome the block, because the next couple of weeks will be a bit busier, and in March I'll be going back to Uni to do my Masters. 
> 
> Anyway, thank you all so much for sticking with the story to this point, and thanks as always for commenting and leaving kudos. I hope you enjoy the chapter.

That Captain and everyone else involved in telling Hux he couldn’t order backup to Maneshfva are now floating outside the Finalizer in pieces. He watches them, their parts, as they drift weightless in the vacuum. It is clear that the chain of command has broken down. He will have to remind everyone that Hux is still General, still his second in command, until such a time as he issues a formal statement otherwise. 

He sent Neiro to fetch the man. Neiro who helped move the prisoners from the Rectitude to the Finalizer without undue harm coming to them. Neiro who he ordered not to harm Hux, and to try not to harm Mitaka and the Stormtroopers unless they got in the way, and whom the Dark tells him he can trust to carry out the task. 

He can see the Captain out there. He almost wants to go out, gather up the parts of her corpse and shake her. Hux could have been lost because of her. Hux may still be lost because of her. No. Hux is clever, Hux will be ok, and if anything’s wrong Neiro will deal with it.

_The baby._ He needs to asks the Force. The Force must be able to tell him something. Give him some clue. He can’t ask the Force. He can’t calm down enough. The Dark Side won’t tell him what he needs to know. He’s shaking, he thinks it’s him this time, not just everything else shaking from the Dark. _A baby?_ He’s a father. Or at least he was a father. What if he asks the Force and the Force tells him the baby is dead? He needs Hux. He needs Hux’s calm, even tone detailing what he should do next, just like when they returned and discovered the mutiny. He doesn’t know if it’s him, or if the whole ship’s shaking too.

_He’s been a fool._

Snoke must have kept Hux around for something more than fucking. _A cur’s weakness-_ what was it? Something about being a sharp tool? Except that doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense. The Hux he has seen recently is hardly rabid. Hux is quiet, calm, sensible… sad. Hux seems very sad. _Is Hux sad because his lover is dead?_ No. No! That can’t be it. If that was it Hux would be vengeful, demanding Rey’s blood, not sad. But- What if it is. What if Snoke and Hux were in love, what if Hux is heartbroken-? He can’t imagine Snoke being in love. He can’t see someone who is in love calling their beloved a rabid cur where they might overhear. 

He doesn’t understand it. 

It doesn’t matter. What matters is that Snoke was too ruthless to keep someone just around to sate his lusts, so there’s no reason he should doubt Hux’s capabilities, and there’s no need to demote the man just because he was sharing the old Supreme Leader’s bed. So his reliance on Hux is perfectly justified. His need to talk to Hux is perfectly justified. _He’s a father. Oh Force._

_Where are they?_ What if Hux is dead? What if Hux is dead and then when he reaches out through the Force the baby is dead? He should never have ordered Hux to deliver Snoke’s items to the Hutt in person. In fact Hux should never have been on that moon doing deliveries at all. It was all beneath the dignity of a General. _He’d wanted to punish him._ It was because of Snoke. Snoke in top of Hux. He’d felt lied to, betrayed, manipulated. He’d wanted to show Hux how unimportant the man was to him. _Idiot._

He still doesn’t know why he started to dream of the redhead. He still doesn’t know if it was Snoke’s influence. _It doesn’t matter._ In reality Hux has shown no sign of even being aware of his complicated feelings, _his lust_ , let alone of wanting to use them against him. He could have, on the island, if he’d wanted to. _Naked, vulnerable, beautiful._ Hux himself couldn’t have caused the dreams. _Such a fool._

He’ll do better. He has to do better. The position they’re in is too precarious for him to continue to make mistakes. 

A clatter behind him, something dropped. He doesn’t turn. It’s just the command staff. He can feel their terror. _Good._ They should be afraid. Fools. _What if Hux is dead?_ Hux is not dead. _**Hux can’t be dead.**_

A presence. He turns. It’s Jrii and Saiva, watching him. He wonders how long they’ve been there. He feels their curiosity in the Force. 

_“Not me. Gydn, in Snoke’s mind, just once.”_

He wonders what Jrii meant. Does Saiva know? He has often been Gydn’s companion. Gydn, he must ask Gydn. _Later._ He can’t think to ask right now. He can’t leave to find Gydn. He needs Hux. _A father. The baby would be grown now, old enough to think itself an adult. **If it lives.**_

“The Dark is roiling in you, my Lord,” Saiva says. “May we be of assistance?”

“No,” he replies. He wants them to go. He does not want to be observed. He wants Hux.

Their heads move towards each-other, a tiny spasm of gesture. They must be talking through the Force. A shrug of movement from Jrii, a tilt of the head from Saiva, who then speaks. “I have the texts Lord Snoke sent me after. You may want to examine them later, my Lord.”

He has no idea what that has to do with anything. It makes him want to lash out, but no. No. When he knows Hux is safe, when they work out what to do about the baby, then maybe old Sith texts will be useful. _Strength, in the Dark._ “Bring them to my quarters.”

A flicker in the Force. Movement outside, seen from the corner of his eye. Neiro’s shuttle returning. Relief. If Hux was dead Neiro would have comm-ed. A glance at Jrii, at Saiva. “Remain here, keep an eye on them-” he nods at the command staff, who flinch, stare up at him with terrified eyes.

“Of course, my Lord,” they echo each other.

He heads to the shuttle bay, long strides making a short journey of it. He arrives just as Neiro is disembarking, and behind Neiro, floating along buoyed by the Force. _Is that Hux?_

“Aren’t we lucky pretty, a welcoming committee,” Neiro calls over his shoulder at the white-clad figure. “I have fetched your General, my Lord, just as I found him. I guarantee no harm has come to him while in my care.”

Neiro floats Hux over to him and deposits the redhead gently on the deck. Hux stumbles a little as the stupport of the Force is withdrawn, but soon straightens up into his usual bearing. “You wished to see me Supreme Leader?”

Hux looks sweaty, dishevelled and tired. Instead of his usual uniform, or even the informal collection of uniform parts he had worn on the island, he is dressed in white. Loose white trousers gathered at his ankles, a loose white tunic gathered at his wrists, his slender waist encircled by his blaster belt in such a way that emphasises just how slender it really is. His toes are peeking out from leather sandals. That copper hair is hanging loose, framing a face so many times more attractive than Lem Umura’s. 

Reality returns. “I must speak with you.”

“Of course, Supreme Leader,” Hux says, voice placid.

“My quarters,” he says, remembering the last time. Hux calm in the face of adversity.

“I’ll leave you to it then, my Lord,” Neiro’s voice breaks the moment. “Nice to have met you, General.”

He dismisses the Knight with a nod. They walk back to his quarters in silence, Hux following at his almost customary two paces behind. They pass officers, techs and Stormtroopers, all eagerly jumping to attention, each and every one saluting Hux with an almost manic grimace on their face. Good, they have learnt their lesson. 

Once inside he drags his chair close to his berth, indicating Hux should sit. The redhead does, looking up at him with those sea coloured eyes. “Is that the Rectitude I saw beside the Finalizer?” the man asks.

He blinks. The capture of the Rectitude seems so long ago now. Could he really not have informed Hux? 

“Yes. It is.”

“Did you take her or did she surrender?” Hux asks. 

“She was disabled by some of the people serving on her,” he replies. “We discovered her just outside the Fva Amuir system, boarded her and captured her.”

“Did we sustain many casualties?” 

He is getting tired of this irrelevant conversation. “No! No, I took her personally with the assistance of my Knights.” A deep breath. Calm. Focus on the issue at hand. “It’s not important. I’m a father!”


	16. Chapter 16

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still have writer's block. Double sigh. I have no idea why writing this chapter left me feeling so tired.
> 
> Anyway, I must extend my customary thanks to everyone reading this and leaving kudos and comments. You are all wonderful. May you all have a lovely day, night, and future.

He feels exhausted. Nothing quite feels real. He spent the entire trip from Nfevrum to the Finalizer bound by the Force, trapped stationary beside Neiro Ren. The Knight hadn’t spoken, instead spent the time humming. Unlike the other Knight he’d seen in the shuttlebay, the one who had been humming atonally, he was almost sure this one had been humming popular music. It had been odd. Incongruous. 

“I’m a father!” the Supreme Leader declares. He blinks. 

“I’m sorry?” He’s sure he’s misheard. 

Kylo Ren drops down to sit on the edge of the berth in front of him. They’re close, pressed almost knee to knee. It’s not like last time when there was a respectable distance between them, this time the man has dragged the chair in close. He can smell sex. Just the faintest aroma of semen, sweat, saliva clinging to the other man. He wonders what Kylo Ren has been doing. Does he have a lover? No. The only person he can think of that the man is close to is-

“Is it the scavenger girl? Did she make contact with you and tell you that she’s pregnant?” His mind shies away from examining the thought too closely. When could they have done it? Over Snoke’s slowly cooling corpse?

“What?” the man’s face scrunches up. “No. No! It’s not- No. I don’t mean I’ve gotten someone pregnant. I mean I’m already a father. I have a child.”

“I don’t understand,” he can comprehend the concept, though his mind struggles a little at the notion of Kylo Ren: Father, but the information seems to be coming out of nowhere. He was sure, the entire trip, that he was being brought back because Kylo Ren was angry with him, because either the man had discovered his past treasons, or because the Hutt had comm-ed him to complain about his rudeness. This is not what he expected.

The Supreme Leader sighs, slumps a little on the berth. The man raises a hand, rubs his eyes, “After we took the Rectitude I went to Telbenefva to sell some of Snoke’s possessions as I’d organised earlier. While I was there I met a woman that I used to know and discovered that she’d had my child.”

Mind racing. The implications- “You’re sure she was telling the truth?”

Dark eyes meet his. “I’m sure.”

“Where is this child?” It will have to be well guarded, they have so many enemies. 

“She didn’t know,” a laugh, bitter. Horribly bitter. “She’d traded it for a lift off the planet she was staying on when she gave birth.”

“That’s-” he doesn’t know what to say. What can one say to something like that. “That’s very disturbing.” He wants to ask the man what kind of woman she is, what kind of lover could he have taken that would do such a thing. 

“I don’t even know if it’s still alive,” the man sighs. “I don’t even know where to start looking. She couldn’t even remember the name of the planet.” 

They _will_ have to start looking, he imagines someone like Savim getting a hold of it. It is not a comforting thought. “You must know something,” he says. “How old would the child be?”

“I don’t know, it was eighteen years ago.” 

The words screech across his mind. For a moment he can’t comprehend them. He looks at Kylo Ren, a few years younger than he is. “Impossible. You would have been a child. You were what, ten?”

“Thirteen,” the man corrects. That Is not any better. He thinks of spotty, weedy little Stormtrooper cadets. He can’t imagine them as parents. They’re children. 

“How old was the girl?” This must have been while the man was studying under his uncle, perhaps she was another Jedi student. If she was, she may not have known what to do when she fell pregnant.

“I’m not sure,” Kylo Ren says, thinking for a moment. “In her early thirties, I think.”

“What?!” he snaps. For once he is appalled for the man instead of by him. He thinks of the Stormtrooper cadets again, he thinks of himself at that age -a skinny little runt, then he finds himself imagining what Kylo Ren must have been like. Young, young and awkward he imagines. The man still seems to be uncomfortable in his own skin. The thought that a fully grown woman, a woman near his own current age, would want to take someone so young to bed, someone so much a child in comparison, disgusts him. He finds himself distressed for Kylo Ren. “A woman in her thirties- I can’t imagine how your mother reacted.” The Leia Organa his father used to rail against would have been furious.

He realises only as he’s saying it how dangerous it could be, mentioning the woman to the man her son has grown to become. Kylo Ren grimaces, and for a moment he braces for violence, but all the man does is say “She didn’t know.”

“Your uncle? Were you under his protection then?” another dangerous topic to raise, but again the man doesn’t strike out at him. Surely the great Luke Skywalker would not have let such a thing happen to someone in his charge?

“He ordered her to leave when he started getting suspicious.”

“But by then it was too late,” it’s sad, those great heroes of the last war unable even to protect their own child, their nephew. “I see,” again he doesn’t know what to say. He thinks for a moment, “This woman, did you kill her?”

“What?!” Kylo Ren snaps. “No! How could I? What kind of man would I be if I killed the mother of my own child?” He doesn’t reply that he’d heard Darth Vader killed the mother of Organa and Skywalker, but then it might not be true. It was a rumour, passed about in whispers of the corruption of the Empire. 

“Then where is she? Is she in the brig?” Surely the man cannot have been foolish enough to leave her running around free. “We must make sure none of our enemies can capture her. The consequences if they discover such a potential weakness will be grave.”

A very long pause this time. The air starts to feel heavier. “Leia Organa would never use my child against me.”

“Whether she would or not is immaterial,” of course he would think first of his mother, and fail to think of those he should. “I can tell you with certainty that Savim or any of the other so-called ‘Supreme Leaders’ will. They will use the child against you and against the Resistance, and when they’re done there won’t be much of the child left.”

Things start rattling again. The inside of his face tingles. It feels as if there is a loud, high-pitched whine, just out of any register that he can hear. He can see distress on Kylo Ren’s face. For a moment, a mad moment, he wants to comfort him.

“I wiped her memory,” the man says. “Even if she is captured Dalie will not be able to lead anyone to the child. She doesn’t even remember there is a child, or that she and I ever met.”

“Good,” he says. “Good, but I think you should return to the planet and capture her.”

“Why?” 

“Because we need to make sure,” he begins, and then “Because she has committed a crime against you. One that should not go unpunished.”

“Why?” the man asks again, those dark eyes pinning him in place. 

He looks down. He wonders if this is a trap. He wonders what the man wants him to say. “You were a child,” he begins. “I don’t know the details, the particulars, any of it, but I do know that to a person in their thirties a thirteen year old is a child. Her actions were against the law of the New Republic, they should be against _our_ law. That eighteen years have passed does not absolve her. If you do not want her dead then she should be incarcerated.” 

“You think she hurt me?” he cannot read the expression on Kylo Ren’s face.

“It’s not my place to decide that,” he says after thinking for a moment, “how you feel about what happened is how you feel. I do think that she did a terrible thing, a thing that could hurt you, could change you, impact on your future, and it sounds like she is the type of woman who would not even care.” For a moment he thinks of Kylo Ren, and in his mind the man’s not much older than thirteen, just a boy, a child, the first time Snoke reached out and touched his mind. He shudders. 

Kylo Ren says nothing for a long moment. “I don’t want to see her again.”

That makes sense. However the woman could be detained without the man ever laying eyes on her. “A squad of Stormtroopers might attract too much attention, but you could send one of your Knights.”

The man shakes his head. “She’s not important, what is important is the child.”

He wants to argue, but at the same time he’s already more than pushed his luck during this conversation. He nods, concedes. If they can find the child without any of their enemies being any the wiser there’ll be little risk to the woman running around loose. “What did you find out about it?”

A sigh of frustration. “Not much, it was all muddled. She was using strong pain stims at the time.”

“There must have been something?”

A very long pause. The man stares off into the distance, a frown on his face, before suddenly those dark eyes pin his. “I could use the Force to let you see her memories.”

He freezes. _Snoke,_ no, not Snoke, no. A mind in his mind. A mind altering his thoughts. _Compliance._ No. _Obediance._ Making him a puppet. _Opening his mouth so vitriol can spill out._ It hurts. He can’t fight it. _Atrocity._ No. No. No, this is Kylo Ren. This is not Snoke. _He can’t say no._

Every word feels torn from him, but he manages to say, “If you think it will help.”

Kylo Ren hesitates, then his hand reaches out, brushes lightly against the side of his face before settling to cup his jaw. The man’s hand is big, bigger than Sunny Adar’s had been. He can feel calluses against his skin. He wonders why the man isn’t wearing his gloves. He feels odd. Then-

_Something. A breath. Not a breath, something that feels like a breath. An exhalation across his senses. He shivers. The room shivers. He can smell Kylo Ren. He can smell Kylo Ren as if he was standing in the man’s skin. There’s warmth. Double vision. He looks back at himself. “Relax,” a whisper across his mind. Then-_

_**He is the woman. Dalie. She is fleeing. Fleeing from her mistakes. She is afraid. Afraid what people will think of her if they find out. Darth Vader’s grandson. Disgust. She needs to go to ground. Just until the baby is born. She will work out what to do then. If only she had more credits. She needs somewhere she can live cheaply. Somewhere she won’t be found.** _

_**Then. The baby is in his arms. He feels her attention wander but he ignores it. Every time her gaze focusses back on the baby he examines it, every time her eyes wander about the room he looks for clues. The baby is small. A warm weight. It is sleeping, then it is looking up at him, then it is sleeping, then it is crying, then it is suckling from his breast. Her breast. He has never held a baby. Pale skin, dark hair, blue eyes- but the latter might change with age. No sense of gender. The room is plain, old plasteel walls, marked with age and grime. It smells of disinfectant. There is no one else there. Through the small window he can see a desert of yellow sand that seems to go on forever.** _

_**The couple. Faceless. Obscure around the edges. Yellow sand on their clothes. Plain clothes, dark colours. Nothing too distinct about them. A man, a woman. Light skin. Sunburnt. Both have short hair. Strong hands taking the baby, the woman? Blunt fingers. Grime beneath fingernails. He can smell machine oil. Alcohol. Sweat. The baby is gone. Relief. The woman? Is gesturing towards a ship. Details foggy. Worry. Looks old, in bad repair. Small ship. A shuttle. A way off the planet.** _

The scene fades. “That’s all she remembered,” Kylo Ren says, but doesn’t say, the words appearing in his mind and not from the man’s lips.

“It’s something,” he replies. His mouth feels dry, his voice hoarse. He can still feel the man there, at the edges of his mind. He has the oddest sensation, the oddest desire, to reach out, but not with his hands. There’s cold there, a raging current, a sense of something sick, anger, heat, unbalance, light, a golden thread like the colour of a sunsnake’s scales that he wants to tease out. They are so close. Kylo Ren is still cupping his face. 

He feels the man withdraw. Mind first, but then hand as the man sits back on the berth. The brush of one final touch. A strand of his hair tucked behind his ear. He sucks in a breath, forces his mind back to the issue at hand. “We know that it is a desert world, probably a planet and not a moon, and that the sand is yellow. We know that the world is not overly populated, and that where she was staying was not very wealthy. We also have some details about the couple she gave the child to, a man and a woman, human, light skinned, also not very wealthy, and probably engaged in some kind of hands-on labour, possibly involving machines. The clothes they wore were fairly standard, but that rules out places like Maneshfva, which have distinctive local fashions. There was also the scent of alcohol, which may help. We have a rough time frame for when she was on the planet, beginning approximately eighteen years ago and lasting no more than a year or so, since she left the planet when the child was still an infant. We also know that she left the planet on an old shuttle in poor repair.” He sighs, “This is not much to start with, but it is some.”

“There must be at least a hundred desert worlds,” the man groans, rubbing his face. “Tatooine, Jakku, Ryloth- and that’s just the first three that come to mind. What are we supposed to do, just set a course to the nearest one and hope for the best?”

He gathers his courage. “I’m afraid not Supreme Leader.” The man frowns at him. “We do need to find the child, but we need not to alert any of our enemies to its existence in doing so. We cannot afford to be seen looking for someone.”

“Then what do you suggest?” the man snaps, leaning towards him, posture aggressive. 

He leans back, pressing himself into the back of the chair. Things had been going so well. “We need a small team, one that can be covert and that won’t automatically lead back to us.” 

He would suggest Mitaka, FN-2188 and FN-2439, because he trusts them in a way, a trust built on his recent interactions with them and not just because they are members of the First Order and he is nominally their General, except before he gathers the courage to Kylo Ren breathes “My Knights, Snoke trusted them to find things much longer lost to history than my child.”

He has trouble imagining no one noticing the Knights. Their very presence seems to pollute the air around them, but perhaps that is only because he knows what they are. Kylo Ren is right though, about Snoke trusting them to fetch things for him. He can remember, or half remember, several times the man mentioned something about some treasure they’d recovered, and not that long ago something about Saiva Ren finding some archive which Snoke thought destroyed. Perhaps they really are the right people for the job. 

“I’ll summon them,” the man says, and then stops. Frowns. “What happened on Maneshfva? I returned to the ship to discover you had comm-ed for backup and that you’d been refused.” Those dark eyes pin his, the room begins to chill. He can feel the rumble of the Force. “Those that refused you have been _punished_ -” he knows without asking that they’re dead. He can almost see their deaths in Kylo Rens eyes. “-and I doubt anyone is still labouring under the impression that you are anything but our General-” obviously the man’s consideration of what his role should be in the new First Order has ended in the conclusion that it should be the same as in the old First Order, at least for now, “-but I realise I still don’t know what actually happened.”

For the merest second he thinks of Sunny Adar. Sunny Adar’s hands on him. Sunny Adar’s lips on him. Kylo Ren calling him a whore. He tries to bury the thoughts down, down where the man won’t be able to see them. “Nothing, it was just a misunderstanding.”

There is a long pause. The man is looking a him, assessing him. Then “You are hiding something from me.”

“It is not important,” he insists. Things have been good between them, he does not want to remind the man of his anger, his disgust, about his relationship with Snoke.

Another long pause. He waits, holding his breath, for the man to lash out. To reach into his mind and take the information. He expects it will hurt. He expects it will be very different from earlier, when Kylo Ren linked their minds gently. The assault never comes. Instead the man says “If I don’t press for details can you promise me whatever happened on the moon won’t become a problem for the First Order in the future?”

A moment’s thought. “I don’t believe it will be a problem, Sir.”

“Ok,” Kylo Ren nods. “Why don’t you go get cleaned up. Once you’re back in uniform I’d like you to deal with the prisoners we took from the Rectitude.”

Dread. The prospect of more death. “Are you intending to execute them?”

The man shakes his head. “I’d prefer not to if their loyalty can be ensured.”

A flicker of thought, the idea that he could recondition them, crosses his mind. Disgust follows, then worry at his own weakness. “You’ll read their minds like usual while we interrogate them?”

“Of course.”


	17. Chapter 17

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TRIGGER WARNING: chapter contains rape. 
> 
> Thank you all for still reading, leaving kudos and comments. Writer's block is hard. Not sure I like this chapter, but here it is.

He sits in the chair where Hux sat earlier, lost in contemplation. He feels calm, or at least calmer than he has in days. He is not sure why. Perhaps it is because now there is a plan in place, because Hux has helped him take his panic, his overwhelming sense of being a father and not knowing what to do about it, and picked it apart into a logical series of actions. They will find his child, keep his child safe. He will have a chance to do what his own parents could not.

He feels like he’s calm enough that he could reach for the Force now and find some answers. He will before he sends for his Knights and sets them to the task, in case there is something more he can tell them. There just hasn’t been time yet, or perhaps there was. There was time to do so while he waited for Hux to bathe and dress, before they interrogated the prisoners, but he hadn’t done it then. He’d been distracted, preoccupied. 

His mind still lingers on what Hux might be hiding from him. He’d sensed shame, something like fear, but nothing like treason on the surface of the man’s mind. He could have reached deeper, could have ripped apart the man’s tissue-thin mental defences, but he hadn’t. He’d found himself not wanting to. The memory of their minds touching, gently, with Hux’s permission- even if that permission had been reluctantly granted, had made him hesitate.

There had been warmth there, something light, something almost embracing, it had reminded him of floating in warm water. Hux had- not given way beneath his mind, because it hadn’t been a surrender, it was more that Hux’s mind had naturally accommodated his. He’d wanted to linger, to push more of himself inside, until the man’s psyche swelled with his presence. 

The closest he can remember to the sensation was linking his mind to Luke’s, back before that ugly distance had grown between them, back when he was a child. He can remember a similar sense of light, of gentleness, of something giving and not taking- very different from Snoke, from the painful, devouring cold of the man’s mind, or even from Rey. There is light in Rey’s mind too, light and hope and strength, stubborn _strength_. As odd as the thought is though, Rey’s mind is too much like his own for him to find comfort sheltering in it. Though they are different, though their feelings, beliefs, driving impulses are different, where their minds met, they met with equal force, the same give, the same take. Her a Lighter version of his Dark. 

For a moment he longs to reach for her again, then for another moment he longs to reach for Hux. He does neither. 

For now he will let the man keep secret what happened on the moon, as long as it causes no trouble. Then, if he wants to know but can’t bring himself to invade Hux’s mind, he will take the knowledge from that officer Mitaka or the Stormtroopers.

Their shuttle had docked as he and Hux had been walking to the brig to interrogate the prisoners. They had passed a hall leading from the shuttle bay just as the officer and the squad had walked out. He had felt relief in the dark-haired man’s mind, relief in the minds of most of the Stormtroopers, to see Hux. Curiosity had made him delve just a little deeper. They had been worried, not certain what Neiro intended for Hux, and if Neiro had intended to bring the redhead to him, as the Knight claimed, they had been afraid of what he wanted with the man. It had annoyed him. He had wanted to strike out, but he had restrained himself because Hux was there. Why had he restrained himself because Hux was there? _Is the redhead making him weak?_ No. Not weak. In that moment it had seemed childish, so he hadn’t done it.

He can live with being feared. He _likes_ being feared. Snoke would always say the weak fear the strong.

The minds of the prisoners had been full of fear towards him. Some of them, the techs mainly, seemed half mad with it, but he hadn’t sensed treason. He’d sensed the officer, Commander Tchalrom had been telling the truth. They had disabled the vessel. They were still loyal to Hux. They were less loyal to him, but as long as Hux remained at his side they would not betray him. He wonders when the redhead inspired such feelings. He thinks of Hux, wild eyed bellowing General Hux, the Hux of Starkiller Base, and that’s not the man he saw in their minds. That man is made of impressions years old. A quieter man. Sensible. Steadfast. He finds it mysterious.

After the interrogation the prisoners had been released, not to serve back aboard the Rectitude, as even the memory of that ship seemed to fill them with dread, but to be stationed aboard the Finalizer. He has left Neiro watching them, for now, because even if their minds do not read of treason he cannot trust that treason won’t grow in the coming days. 

It is worrying that even with the addition of Stormtroopers, techs and Commander Tchalrom the ship is nowhere near fully staffed. If they split the crew in two to staff both vessels they will each be running on the barest of skeleton crews. It seems they will need to get more people, and soon, though so far he has no idea how that’s going to be managed.

In the calmness of the afternoon he has found himself forced to admit that he probably can’t afford to send all his Knights after his child. There will be no point finding it at all if their ships are attacked, overrun and everyone onboard killed because they cannot adequately defend themselves. The Knights are too strong for him to afford to lose their protection just yet. It sounds so rational, so reasonable when put like that. In truth his reasons have something more to do with gut instinct, or perhaps the Force whispering to him, than anything else.

When he thinks back to the battle onboard the Rectitude, to Gydn standing surrounded by the unmarked dead, to Saiva crouched over that struggling officer- he does not want either of them chasing down his child. It is weak. A weak, Lightsider impulse. Perhaps he’ll regret it. Perhaps he’ll change his mind. There is time to change his mind. He hopes there is time to change his mind.

He’ll send Jrii and Xatjt. He can remember them from before, from when they were children. They had been two of the most diligent, hardworking, attentive and stubborn of his uncle’s students. He sees no great signs that these things have changed, even if so much about them has. Jrii had not harmed the prisoners. Xatjt’s bloodlust had been not so different from his aboard the Rectitude. Perhaps he can trust them with his child’s safety. Perhaps.

This day he has realised that he doesn’t really trust his Knights. It is a strange thought, a thought born of his contemplation of which of them he could trust with those that are important to him. Those that are very vulnerable. His child. Hux, for all that he might wish it otherwise. He didn’t think that it was possible for him to lose faith in them. He remembers trusting them absolutely, remembers knowing they would have his back no matter what, he remembers fighting side by side, killing side by side, living side by side, but somewhere in the years that have passed that trust has faded. They’ve all been off serving Snoke, him included. Whatever closeness that once existed between them has dissipated, and now that he thinks about it, when he really thinks on who they have become, he no longer really recognises the children they once were. Well, except for Neiro.

In Neiro he still sees skinny, little, pug-faced, auburn haired Narem Vhloe, with the laughing brown eyes and the ancestry they’d always proudly declared as _mostly_ human, who’d been friendly and pleasant and never taken anything seriously. Who used to sneak around behind the temple smoking strange herbs, and who’d always share anything alcoholic they got a hold of with anyone who asked nicely. Who had always been a bit behind everyone else in Luke’s lessons, not because they were any less capable that the rest of the students but because, as his uncle had insisted, they didn’t care enough to excel. 

Maybe that’s why he sent them to fetch Hux and not one of the others, perhaps that’s why he wants Neiro to stay. Neiro reminds him of his past. A weakness. A weakness he thought he’d outgrown. Still, he feels if he needs a Knight to guard Hux, or to guard any other vulnerable, Force-null people that he’d rather trust Neiro to it than Gydn or Saiva. He worries that this means that somewhere, deep down inside he feels like he doesn’t have power over them. It’s ridiculous. He has always been much stronger in the Force as any of them.

In the morning he will give Jrii and Xatjt his orders, and perhaps send Rhadn along as well when he arrives. Rhadn, Cmryt Zhva’adtm as was, was another of Luke’s best and brightest. Another that believed effort could make up for the shortcomings of nature. For now he should reach out with the Force, see if it yields anything more to go on. 

He gets off the chair and sinks down, sitting cross-legged on the floor in front of his berth. He closes his eyes. A breath, another. He tries to clear his mind. He tries to push the chaos ever lurking there to the very edge of his thoughts. He thinks of the child. He reaches for the child.

_The mirror. He is in front of the mirror. He is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself in front of the mirror. He is the approach. The steps split into iterations. For a moment he feels infinite, but no, there is an end. An end. An end. He pushes forward. He makes himself the self that approaches. The first self. The self reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching - He is the mirror. He looks back at himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself..._

He opens his eyes. That cannot be right. Again, again he closes his eyes and reaches out. 

_The mirror. He is in front of the mirror. He is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself in front of the mirror. He is the approach. The steps split into iterations. For a moment he feels infinite, but no, there is an end. An end. An end. He pushes forward. He makes himself the self that approaches. The first self. The self reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching - He is the mirror. He looks back at himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself..._

He does not understand. That is definitely the Force, trying to tell him something. He tries, one last time.

_The mirror. He is in front of the mirror. He is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself is himself in front of the mirror. He is the approach. The steps split into iterations. For a moment he feels infinite, but no, there is an end. An end. An end. He pushes forward. He makes himself the self that approaches. The first self. The self reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching reaching - He is the mirror. He looks back at himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself himself..._

Annoyance. Another fucking obscure Force vision. He wonders why the Force can’t just lay things out, nice and neatly, so that they’re easy to understand and can’t be misunderstood. 

He gets up. Finds himself pacing, back and forth, back and forth, in front of his grandfather’s helmet. He wonders if Darth Vader had the same problem. 

Perhaps he is tired. Perhaps it will make sense in the morning. Perhaps, if it does not, he will be able to reach out then and find something that does. Feeling resentful he gets ready and goes to bed. 

He is more asleep than not when his door chiming wakes him up. He sits up, reaches out with the Force and senses Saiva, a Dark presence, an absence, and in the man’s hands something even Darker. He gets up and pads barefoot to the door, gesturing with the Force to open it. 

“The books, My Lord,” the man says, holding out a short stack of ancient volumes. Ah, yes. The books from the Sith archive. He takes them and dismisses the Knight,

They feel cold beneath his hands. Cold and almost alive. There is an energy there, the faintest hum of something more than their material form. He brings them to his desk, sinks down into his chair and takes the first from the pile. It is bound in leather, the pages vellum. He wonders what animal died to preserve the knowledge contained within. He wonders if that animal was sapient.

He lifts the pale, featureless cover, turns the first, blank page. Inside there is writing, writing in a script he cannot read. He traces the glyphs with a finger and for a moment they seem to writhe beneath his touch. He drops the book. It slams closed. He raises a hand to open it again, but hesitates, he can come back to it, there are others. 

The second book is bound between two large, flat plates of bone, another script, one he equally doesn’t recognise burned into the front as its title. Inside he finds the same script, flowing, sinuous, scratched into sheets of rough paper, along with strange symbols that make little sense. He puts the book aside and reaches for the third, the final book.

This one is ornately bound in red leather embossed with an elaborate, floral pattern. The corners are capped in gold, the edge of the pages gilded, and it smells faintly of something heady, something like incense. The title is in yet another script that he can’t decipher, but in hope he still opens the book and peers inside.

The first page features a highly stylised, elaborately painted and gilded illumination of a naked man with a massive, erect cock staring out at the reader. At his feet kneels another figure, just as naked as he is, though positioned as such that the reader can’t tell their biological sex, gazing up at the standing man with abject adoration. A chain, or a rope, or something, picked out in silver, extends from he standing man’s right hand to curl around the kneeling figure’s throat like leash. 

A blush rises to his cheeks. He flips the page. More text he can’t read surrounded by illumination depicting little naked figures contorted into all sorts of impractical sexual positions, all surrounded by flowering vines and birds. He flips the page. More of the same. He flips the page. 

In the top left corner there is a small image of the standing man from the first illumination, naked and massively erect once more. He stands wreathed in a gold and red border, holding the end of another silver chain and looking down at the larger figure that occupies most of the page. This figure is of a naked man, different from the first, stretched out as if lying on his back. The chain extends from the small figure’s hand and enters the reclining figure’s open mouth. A line of muted silver, as if an extension of the chain, follows the centre of the larger figure’s throat down to his chest, where an image of his heart is picked out in that same muted silver. 

He finds his eyes caught on the look of helplessness on the reclining figure’s face. He lifts a finger, runs it down the figure’s cheek to his open mouth, turned down at the corners in an exaggerated expression of agony. 

Lifting his hand he flips the page. More writing. He flips ahead to the next illumination. 

The image this time is of the standing man and the reclining man having sex. The reclining man is on his back, legs spread, the standing man kneeling between them. The reclining man looks up at the standing man with complete adoration, both hands raised to cup his face. On his chest his heart is once more picked out in silver. 

He closes the book. He feels uneasy. Perhaps he should come back to them in the morning.

As he falls back to sleep he thinks of Hux’s indignation for him, the man’s insistence that Dalie should be punished. He is not weak. He does not think she hurt him, or at least he does not think she hurt him any more than anyone else he’s been attached to has, but perhaps he’s wrong. He does not want to pick apart his feelings about her actions right then, so instead he thinks of Hux. He thinks of evidence that Hux must care for him, at least a little. It makes him feel odd. The last thing he thinks of as sleep takes him is touching his mind to Hux’s.

He dreams. _He is in a cavernous room, the walls, floor and ceiling the darkest, most light devouring black. He cannot move. His body won’t obey. He begins to panic. All he can tell is that he’s lying down on something soft, but the softness gives him no comfort. A hand, he feels a hand on his ankle, cupping the bone. He realises that he’s naked._

_The hand moves up his leg, over his calf, to his thigh, where it begins to dip, moving inwards. He tries to shake it off. He tries to shout. He tries to reach for the Force and destroy the person touching him. Nothing happens._

_Another hand, on his other thigh. Suddenly they grab him, shove his legs upwards, pin his knees to his chest. “Now, now,” a voice says as he frantically tries to make his legs press themselves together, “You know you’ll only hurt yourself if you struggle.” He knows that voice._

_Snoke moves over him, pining him down beneath the man’s naked bulk. He wants to scream. He can’t scream. If he screamed no one would hear him, and if they did no one would care._

_One of the hands leaves his legs and moves downwards, towards Snoke’s groin. A moment. A movement. A stabbing, killing pain up inside of him. A high, sharp sound escapes between his lips._

_The hand moves again, curls around his throat. “Enough of that,” the man orders. The pain continues, intensifying in waves with the man’s movements._

_His arm, suddenly he can feel his arm. He brings it up, clawing at the grip the man has on his throat. The grip tightens. Snoke laughs. He can’t breathe. A light slap to the side of his face. A reminder. “You should know better by now-” Snoke leaning in close, as if to kiss him._

_The man stops. Frowns. His head turns this way, that. “Who are you?” his eyes narrow, he pulls back suddenly. A lance of pain up inside, then lessening to a sting. Air rushing into his lungs. Somehow he manages to sit up._

_His limbs aren’t his. They are too thin, the skin a different shade of pale, fine reddish blonde hairs growing from them. He looks up. Looks at Snoke. Snoke is looking back at him, something between fury and contempt on his face. “You can’t have him!” the man snarls, striding in close. The man is no longer naked, a robe of glittering gold concealing his form. “He’s **mine.** He will always be mine!” _

He wakes to a world gone white. He sucks in deep, heaving breaths, still feeling as if he’s being strangled. He blinks, then tries to blink the after shadows from behind his eyes. He smells smoke. His blanket is on fire.

He leaps out of the berth and grabs it with the Force, throwing it into the refresher just as the sonic fire suppression system starts up. He shudders at the noise. Looking around he tries to work out what happened. He sees scorch marks, sees other evidence of small fires just extinguished. He must have channelled Force lightning in his sleep. _Snoke on him, inside of him._ Another lance of power from his fingertips, earthing against the plasteel floor. 

He sinks back to sit on the edge of the berth, mind racing. He feels very cold. Very, very cold.


	18. Chapter 18

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for bearing with me whilst I've had writer's block, and thanks as alwats for your kudos and kind comments.

He sits at his desk eating a rationbar and reviewing reports that have built up during his time on Maneshfva. By his elbow a mug of hot water sits, a small square of seaweed bobbing about inside. The seaweed had still been in his luggage, on the shuttle. He is glad the shuttle has returned, Mitaka and the full squad of Stormtroopers onboard, none lost after those last moments when he’d watched them shrinking to nothing down below.

Things are not good. Everyone aboard the Finalizer is horribly jumpy, almost radiating terror. He does not know exactly what went down in his absence, but it seems to have thoroughly put the fear of Kylo Ren into the crew. Not that it’s much of a crew. They were understaffed to begin with, and now with a second ship and the Supreme Leader throwing people out of airlocks the situation has only gotten worse. 

Their plan for the next few days is to sell of a few more of Snoke’s possessions and then organise a refuel and resupply. He would consider also organising some mercenaries, or perhaps a recruitment drive, but mercenaries can prove exceedingly expensive in the long run and unless Kylo Ren is willing to sit around reading minds to make sure no one is an enemy agent or harbouring unhelpful ideology neither idea seems particularly safe right now. He has an idea, or at least the idea of an idea, the sense that he’s forgotten something useful. He hopes whatever the thought is it becomes clearer soon.

A chime at his door makes him look up. He checks who it is on his pad. It’s Mitaka, back in uniform and looking uncomfortable. He goes to the door to let the man in.

“General Hux, Sir!” the man greets him with a salute. He waves Mitaka inside.

“Yes Lieutenant?”

The man stands awkwardly in the middle of the room, one hand behind his back, the expression on his face conflicted. 

He’s contemplating telling the man to either speak or leave him in peace, when Mitaka brings forward the hand that was behind his back and holds it out toward him. In his grip is a familiar length of silk. That bloody shawl. “I’m sorry Sir,” the man says. “He’d gathered all these guards around when the Knight took you, and then he wouldn’t let us leave unless I promised to give it to you. He also said to tell you, and I won’t use his exact words because I don’t want to say them any more than I think you want to hear them, but it was something about showing you the ‘sunsnake temple’ if you ever come back to the moon.”

He looks at the shawl. He looks at Mitaka’s uncomfortable face. He snatches the shawl out of the man’s hand and dumps it on the desk. “Is that all Lieutenant?”

Mitaka pauses. An even more agonized look comes over his face. “Permission to speak freely Sir?”

He wonders what the man could possibly have to say. He supposes there’s only one way to find out. “Granted.”

“Sir, I really don’t wish to speak out of turn-” a pause, a breath while the man gathers his thoughts. “On the moon, on Maneshfva, I believe there were mistakes made. Mistakes made by me, mistakes made by the Supreme Leader, mistakes made by the Command Staff onboard the Finalizer, mistakes made by you, and mistakes made by the troops.” A pause, a slightly panicked look. “If anyone is to be held accountable I would prefer it to be _me_ instead of the squad, they look to their commanders for direction and as a Lieutenant I should have done better.”

“I am not looking to hold anyone to account,” he says, curious. “Continue, Lieutenant.”

The man takes a moment to gather his courage, but when he speaks his voice is firm. “None of us did enough to ensure your safety. We all knew Sunny Adar was making you uncomfortable, we all knew he was sexually interested in you, we all knew, or at least suspected, he was being dishonest in his motives for bringing us to the Hutt’s palace, yet we let ourselves be isolated in a place where he had the upper hand, we let our guard down, became inebriated, and lost track of where you were. Anything could have happened to you, Sir. You could have been killed!” Mitaka’s voice raises on the latter, and he wonders why the idea seems to distress the man so much. 

“We made it through the situation on Maneshfva with no losses, but I concede that you have something of a point. Is this all you wished to raise with me Lieutenant?” he asks, trying not to think of Sunny Adar’s mouth, his hands on him.

Mitaka frowns, fidgets. It is obvious the man has more to say. He walks over to sit in one of the steel framed chairs that serves as his small lounge area and gestures for Mitaka to sit in the other. The man does, nervous, sitting as much to attention as a person physically can. “Speak freely, I wish to hear your thoughts.” He is curious. He cannot imagine Mitaka approaching him, a superior officer, in such a way to share his concerns before Snoke died. He wonders what’s changed.

It takes a while, but eventually the man gathers himself enough to speak again, his voice low, urgent. “I do not want you to think I am being insubordinate, I do not want you to think I am being disloyal to the First Order. I am loyal. I am loyal to what we have the opportunity to become, but we won’t become anything if you die.” A moment of confusion. He thinks through the implications of what the Lieutenant is saying, the notion of ‘what we have the opportunity to become,’ but the man is still talking, the words rolling out almost without his control. “I accept if you feel you have to report what I’m about to say to the Supreme Leader. I accept if you feel I need to be punished, or reconditioned for it, or even executed, though I do beg you not to involve the Stormtroopers if you feel that I have truly overstepped my bounds. The thing that I must say, the thing that I think you need to realise is that if you die it is all going to fall apart. No one is going to follow him without you. As far as the crew is concerned he is more monster than man. They are terrified of him, Sir, and without you as a buffer they will all either flee to one of the other factions or, more likely, they will try to bring him down and die in the attempt.”

A horrible feeling comes over him. The man is right. Kylo Ren would probably kill him for thinking it, but he really can’t see the crew following the man for long with only fear to ensure their loyalty. Especially when he has the tendency to suddenly turn on them and start killing people. Is he really all that stands between the real First Order and complete destruction? Mitaka is staring at him, white faced, eyes huge and dark. The man is afraid, afraid but still brave. “I won’t mention this conversation to him, though I cannot guarantee he won’t read it in my mind.” Mitaka seems to get even paler, there is one thing he can reassure him of however. “You will not be punished for bringing your concerns to me, and neither will the Stormtroopers.” He frowns, “You said mistakes were made on Maneshfva, and I think you have delineated those you feel were made by yourself and the squad, but you mentioned the Supreme Leader, the Command Staff and myself. I would guess the mistakes made by the Supreme Leader were sending us without backup and insisting we went to the Hutt’s palace to make the deal, the mistake made by the Command Staff was denying us backup when I comm-ed to request it at the palace- though I think they’ve more than paid for it- but may I ask what mistakes you feel I made?”

“I will say, Sir, that I also think it was a mistake sending you in the first place,” Mitaka hastens to say. “You are one of the two most important figures in the First Order, and as such it was reckless to put you in such a vulnerable position when the Order itself is in such a vulnerable position.” Mitaka swallows, audibly. “As to the mistakes you made, Sir, please forgive me for this, but you showed an inadequate concern for your own safety. I am aware that it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to argue with the Supreme Leader when he selected you for the mission, when he gave you only one squad of Stormtroopers to protect you, and when he insisted you go to the Hutt’s palace, but you should have made sure you had a bodyguard of at least two Stormtroopers at all times, you should not have gotten off the transport to repair that skiff and put yourself in danger from that snake, and you should never, ever, have gone off with that man unprotected and without telling any of us where you were going.”

A pause. Mitaka looks like a man facing the gallows. He doesn’t know what to say. When he thinks back to the choices he made the man does seem to have a point, though he never felt any danger from the sunsnake. “I will take your words into consideration,” he says after a moment’s thought. He is still struggling with the notion that the survival of the First Order might depend so much on his continued existence. For the longest time Snoke was the one who mattered, and he would have assumed with Snoke’s death Kylo Ren took up that mantle.

They fall to silence for a while. Mitaka is still looking at him, still looking worried. His mouth opens once, twice, before the man shakes his head. Face returning to a blank expression. “You may go Lieutenant, if you have nothing further to say.”

“No Sir,” the man replies with a salute, getting to his feet and all but scrambling from the room. He watches the door slide shut behind the officer pensively. He feels conflicted. A little annoyed at being made aware of his mistakes, confused that his life might mean so much, worried about what will happen if he does die, even more confused by the conflicted feelings the possible collapse of the First Order evokes in him, almost frightened about what Kylo Ren will do if he discovers the conversation or the way Mitaka (and probably other officers) are thinking, but also a little proud of the Lieutenant. It cannot have been an easy thing, to confront a commanding officer in such a way, when you know it might put yourself and those you care about in danger. If Snoke was still alive, if he was still the man he was under Snoke’s control, it is unlikely the Lieutenant’s bravery would go unpunished.

He returns to his desk, picks up his pad and appends a note to Mitaka’s personnel file recommending him for promotion when the time comes. Then he sinks back into the desk chair, troubled. 

It is only later, as he is getting ready for bed that the idea from earlier crystalizes. He remembers hundreds of blank, mechanical faces. Droids. Decommissioned from the Clone Wars, unwanted, unowned, unprotected. If they are still there on the moon where he gave his mother to the water they could retrieve them, get them running, change their programming, that way they could swell the ranks without it costing them thousands upon thousands of credits. 

He will bring it up with the Supreme Leader in the morning. As he walks towards his berth something else niggles at him, something seems wrong. Something he didn’t notice earlier. 

The box, it’s the box, the box is gone. The box containing Skywalker’s lightsabre is no longer on the table by his berth. Someone has been in his rooms. 

Panic. He looks around, tries to spot anything else disturbed, but everything seems to be as he left it before Maneshfva. His eyes go back to the spot where he last saw the box. Perhaps Kylo Ren took it, the thing belongs more to the man than to him. Perhaps.

He will ask the Supreme Leader in the morning, when he brings up the droids.


	19. Chapter 19

It took him a very long time the night before to fall back to sleep. He feels wrong. Off. Exposed. Assaulted. He is afraid. He is very afraid. He knows those limbs, that body. He has seen it. Admired it. Now he has been inside it.

He does not know if that was Hux’s memory, or the man’s nightmare. He does not know if linking their minds allowed something to bleed through from the redhead. He does not know if the dream was just some sick figment his own mind made up, and he does not know how to ask Hux, because the only way he will ever know is to find out from the man himself. He thinks of the images he took from Hux’s mind. Hux and Snoke. He tries to think past his first visceral reaction, his disgust and jealousy, and remember context. He can’t. He has no memory of what Hux thought about what was happening. 

He cannot bring himself to face Hux yet.

First thing, when he awoke and could no longer fool himself into thinking he’d fall back to sleep, he summoned Jrii and Xatjt. They have already been gone for hours, off on the quest to find his child. He hopes he can trust them. 

He had told them what he knew, but he had also showed Dalie’s memories to them. It was odd. As he projected the relevant recollections into their minds he realised he could have just done the same with Hux, instead of linking them as he had. With Jrii and Xatjt he created a one-way street, a way to give information without also risking giving access to his mind. He had approached Hux’s mind like the mind of a friend, an ally, another Jedi, as if he was still one himself. It is only on reflection that he realises how vulnerable he could have made himself. Has made himself if that dream originated in Hux’s mind. He is not sure why he chose to do what he did. It just seemed the natural choice.

He has several buyers lined up for more of Snoke’s goods, a lot of them in local systems, and he intends to try and make as many deals as possible before the day is done. He’ll go himself, in a fast shuttle with a squad of Stormtroopers. He needs the distraction. 

Before he leaves he summons Saiva, Gydn and Neiro, telling them that Hux is in charge while he’s away, but ordering them to keep an eye on things and to be prepared to defend the fleet if they’re attacked. He chooses the same squad of Stormtroopers as he took to Telbenefva. They load more crates of black stone, a couple of crates of gilded panels from Snoke’s bedroom, some more chests full of smaller items, more paintings, some tapestries, a nearly life-sized sculpture of a naked youth being chased down by some monster headed god -prey of one sort or another- and what seems like half of Snoke’s wardrobe. There is a musty smell to the clothes, the smell of the man himself, gone stale. After the dream it makes his stomach turn.

He starts closest, beginning with the ice planet Dra Ninfeifva, still in the Fva Amuir system. There he takes the shuttle to first one ice palace and then another. The world remains frozen all year round and its few, exceedingly wealthy, inhabitants carve themselves elaborate dwellings out of the ice. The first palace looks like a white, glittering dragon in the mid-afternoon sun of the world. He is greeted by a woman clothed head to toe in snow-white fur over a gown of equally white silk. Around her neck, her wrists, in her hair, in her ears, piecing her lip and her nose huge white gems glitter. 

Her guards watch him warily as he shows her the items they discussed. Her eyes rove over the paintings, the sculpture, the contents of two of the chests. In the end she chooses the sculpture, two of the paintings, and half the contents of one of the chests. She tries to bargain him down, he remains stubborn, she concedes with a laugh that bounces lightly off the ice inside her palace. She transfers the credits, poking at her pad with her nails, long and plated in white metal.

At the next palace, a confection of white ice shaped like a crown, he is greeted by a matronly Toydarian. For a moment he worries, because of their immunity to Force manipulation, but he reminds himself that he hasn’t had to use the Force yet. “For my son,” she says again and again, to explain why she is thinking of buying anything. “He lives on Coruscant. Terrible place Coruscant. So crowded. He lives in this tiny little apartment, only three bedrooms.”

She wants four of the tapestries, the contents of two of the chests, and a large painting of a naked male Duros gazing out at the observer with incongruously seductive vulnerability. “For my son,” she insists. 

She also tries to bargain with him, except she’s stubborn enough that he eventually gives her a 5% discount on his original asking price. He could just kill her since he can’t use the Force to make her accept his terms, but word might get around and make offloading more of Snoke’s things harder. She transfers the credits to much “My son will be so happy. This will make his little Coruscanti apartment so much nicer.”

The next stop is in a neighbouring system, the Syulmit System. There are only three inhabitable worlds, one being one of the system’s two planets, Vraphro, and the other two being moons orbiting Vraphro- Amch and Polnyru. He takes Snoke’s clothing to a tiny apartment, not quite as wide as the shuttle and barely any deeper, on the densely packed urban moon of Amch, where an excitable young Gungan is happy to take them off his hands. The young male is apparently the head of the wardrobe department of Amch’s major, exceedingly well funded, theatre. Snoke would have been furious.

He then goes to the much more sparsely populated, agrarian moon of Polnyru, which supplies most of the locally grown produce for the Syulmit System. The man he meets at a sprawling villa there, human, going grey around the temples, is only interested in a collection of tiny, carved stone statuettes. “Alderaanian,” the man whispers, running reverent fingers over the delicate figures. “Thousands of years old. Irreplaceable, as you can well imagine.” The man’s hands shake as he transfers the credits, his eyes never really leaving the statuettes. Inside his study, where he had led them and offered them Kaf or some of the local tea, there are other such figurines, ceramics, textiles, maps, trinkets, books, all from the destroyed planet.

The next stop is Vraphro, to a government building where a pair of bureaucrats in matching black suits, with matching severe haircuts, and matching humourless expressions transfer credits for the stone and gilded panels. They say nothing to suggest what they want the material for and he doesn’t linger.

The final stop is about eight hours away by hyperspace. Canto Bight. Another desert world. The thought occurs to him early in the trip, so he spends most of the voyage sitting in his plush leather chair and trying to use the Force to scan his destination for his child. He finds nothing. 

In the silence of frustration his mind starts lingering on the dream. He thinks of Hux, Hux under Snoke. _That was Hux’s body, wasn’t it?_ He tries to think back. Tries to remember if there was any sense of another consciousness trapped alongside his. He can’t remember. The Dark rises, almost unnoticed. The shuttle starts to shake. He forces it back down.

He meets the buyer at the casino, bringing the remaining objects to his private room. There he’s met by a middle aged human with a barely dressed blue-skinned Twilek hanging off his arm. The Twilek seems very young, and her movements are slow, dazed. He can read in her mind that she’s taken something the man gave her, but she’s not sure what it was. She thinks she wants to be there, because Mr. Werinn is a much nicer man than the last one she was with, and he likes to spend money on her and give her lots of nice things. She’s hoping one day to save up enough to return to Ryloth. _A memory. Ripped out of her mother’s arms as a child. Forced on board a shuttle. Stuck in a small hold with at least a dozen more Twilek women and children. Anger. Pain. Longing for home._ He pulls his mind away from hers. There is a wave, a ripple through the room. For a moment everything rattles, from the gilded lounge suite to the numerous open bottles of expensive wine to the crystal chandeliers hanging from the high ceiling. He remembers the dream. For some odd reason his mind flicks to Dalie. He forces down the Dark.

Werinn is a weapons dealer. Canto Bight has always been lousy with them. The man is also almost painfully insincere, a smile on his face that neither meets his eyes nor reflects his mind. “You want a drink?” the man asks, then answers for him. “Of course you want a drink. Come, sit down,” a gesture at the gilded lounge suite as the man pours them both a glass of something pale green and bubbly. He declines both. The man then offers him the Twilek.

He feels her fear in the Force. Yet she still comes over to him, stumbling thanks to whatever the man gave her, and tries to pull him into an embrace. He pushes her away. Gently. Then grabs her arm when the action makes her stumble and almost fall. He leads her over to the lounge and helps her sit down before turning to the man he’s come to do business with. 

A gesture and the Stormtroopers carry the two paintings, the one remaining tapestry and the half empty chest over. Every now and then Werinn makes a sound of disappointment, as though he expected Snoke’s treasures to be much greater than they are, but he can feel desire, greed, envy in his mind. The greed crystalizes when wooden box is removed from the chest and opened to reveal an ancient, fragile, Mandalorian war helmet. The man wants it. The man must have it. The man covets the power, the masculinity it represents. The man does not let any of this on, his face remaining perfectly impassive. The man also does not want to pay anything near a reasonable price for any of it.

It feels like they bargain for hours as he gets more and more impatient and the Twilek dozes off to snore gently on the couch. Werrin will give him 100 credits for a painting worth thirty times that. Werrin will give him 1200 credits for a tapestry worth seven times that. Werrin will give him 7000 credits for the helmet, worth ten times that. Eventually he resorts to telling the man that if he doesn’t really want to buy anything there’s plenty of others that do. Still the man tries, tries and tries until, frustrated, Kylo Ren accepts a 12% discounted price for everything except the helmet. The helmet he demands full price for, knowing how much the man wants it. Finally they strike a bargain for both paintings, the tapestry and most of the contents of the chest, including the helmet. 

“You’re a shrewd businessman, I’ll give you that,” the man says. “Are you sure I can’t offer you a drink?” He declines once more and the man shrugs, going over to the gilded sideboard where he retrieves a plasteel crate. The man plops it down on the low table in front of the lounge and sits, disturbing the Twilek who makes a tiny squeak of fear before she remembers where she is. The man opens the crate revealing stack after stack of gleaming credit chips. “I always conduct these kinds of small deals in real cash,” the man says, “It’s a habit I’ve had since I was a kid.”

He watches the man count out ten-thousand credit chips, thousand credit chips, hundred credit chips, ten credit chips and finally one credit chips. Irritated. The temptation to just strike the man down where he sits and take the money is very strong. He doesn’t. It feels childish. He imagines explaining to Hux, but then maybe Hux would understand. Maybe not. _It really shouldn’t matter._ **It does matter, and it’s probably time he accepts that.**

There’s more credit chips left in the crate when the man’s done than there are in the pile on the table for him to take. He doesn’t need to read the man’s mind to know it’s something of a petty power play, Werinn enjoys forcing others to see just how rich he is. Anyway, he doesn’t want to delve too deeply into the man’s thoughts, because they’re mainly preoccupied with all the degrading ways he’s going to fuck the Twilek before he dumps her. 

The Stormtroopers pack the credit chips into the almost empty chest under his supervision before the man dismisses them with a wave and a “Nice doing business with you” and goes to grope the Twilek. They let themselves out. It’s getting late, he’s hungry and it’s a bit of a walk to the shuttle bay. For a moment he considers stopping to get something to eat, but Werinn’s put him off Canto Bight and there’s rationbars on the shuttle. 

They’re almost back to the vessel when he feels a warning in the Force. He draws his lightsabre, gestures for the Stormtroopers to draw their blasters. A group of men, mercenaries from the look of them, materialise from a dozen different hiding places in the narrow street. The narrow, _deserted_ street he realises. A quick perusal of their surface thoughts tells him Werinn sent them. He wants his credits back. In fact he organised to have mercenaries ambush them and retrieve the credits after the sale long before they even arrived on the planet.

He kills them, all of them, aside from the two killed by Stormtroopers. “Take the chest, return to the shuttle. I will be with you soon.” he orders.

Werinn doesn’t even see him come in. The man is hunched over the Twilek on the lounge, muttering obscenities against the skin of one of her lekku. She sees him though, her hazy eyes half focus on him as he approaches the couple on quiet feet. It’s only as he grabs Werinn, pulls him away from the Twilek, and sticks his lightsabre through the man’s face that she reacts. She shrieks, flinching clumsily away from him to cower by the lounge when her drugged body can’t quite work out how to obey the instinct to flee. He can read in her mind that the man gave her some more of whatever drug it was just after he left. 

He drops Werinn, most of the man’s face burnt away, and looks at the girl. She is so very young. Young and frightened. 

The crate with the credit chips is still on the low table, he flips open the lid, surveys the contents. At least ten times as much as Werinn paid for Snoke’s treasures. He takes out ten ten-thousand credit chips and looks once more at the Twilek. “Stand,” he orders, reinforcing it with the Force. The girl does so, clumsily. 

He knows there are ways to burn the influence of substances out of a being’s system using the Force, he just has no idea how to do it. There are Light ways, which are easier on the patient but require delicacy and finesse, and there are Dark ways, which are dangerous and can lead to the patient’s death. He doesn’t trust himself to attempt either.

“Take these,” he orders. Mechanically the girl holds out her hands to accept the credit chips. She is terrified. She doesn’t know what’s happening. Underneath it all she still longs to return to Ryloth.

The credits can pay her way one hundred times or more. Of course she may still be detained in connection to Werinn’s death. “Summon the security forces,” he orders. She does so. They wait.

Two security officers burst into the room. “There’s no one here but the Twilek,” her tells them, using the Force to alter their perceptions. “She did not kill Mr Werinn.” He uses the Force to change the Twilek’s memories as he says “She was dozing on the lounge and when she woke up she found a man had broken in. The man was wearing a mask. She can’t identify him. The man shouted at Mr Werinn and accused him of cheating him in a deal, then shot Mr Werinn in the face with a blaster. She was very frightened. The man didn’t see her because she was lying down on the lounge. The man ran out. She got up and summoned you. You will note down what happened and then-” he looks at the two officers, choosing the one with seniority and connections “- _You_ will take her back to her residence so she can pack her possessions. You will then take her to the shuttle port and make sure she gets on a shuttle to Ryloth, or a shuttle to a world where she can catch a shuttle to Ryloth. Earlier today Mr Werinn gave her 100 thousand credits for her services. You will not question this. You will make sure she departs _safely._ ”

He turns most of his attention back to the Twilek, still standing where he left her. “Mr Werinn gave you 100 thousand credits for your services. You will use some of the money to make your way back home to Ryloth. When you are there you will make a new life for yourself. A life that makes you happier. This nice officer is going to take you back to your residence so you can pack, and then she’ll make sure you start your journey safely. You will forget you ever saw me.”

He holds them in a web of the Force as he picks up the crate with the credit chips before pausing, eyeing Snoke’s treasures where they lay around the room. With a shrug he gathers them to him with the Force, floating them ahead of himself as he leaves. There’s no reason he can’t sell them again. 

He waits until he’s left the casino and is halfway back to the shuttle before he releases the officers and the Twilek. He’s done what he can for the girl. Perhaps she’ll be alright.

As they leave the planet he wonders why he did it. Not why he killed Werinn, Werinn double crossed him, the man deserved death and more. No, he wonders why he gave the Twilek the credits and then tried to give her a better future. _Her memories. A child. Stolen from her world and sold into a life she didn’t choose._ Perhaps he is getting soft.

The journey back seems to take forever. He eats two rationbars and drinks instant kaf with too much sugar. It’s late. He wonders if he’ll be able to sleep. He remembers the dream. 

They are greeted on arrival by Hux, looking tired but determined. “Supreme Leader, Sir,” the man greets him with a salute.

“Hux,” he replies. Suddenly he wonders what the man’s first name is.

“Were you successful on your missions?” the man asks. 

“More than successful. I believe we are now in a position to arrange a refuel and resupply. We will no longer be stuck in this sector of the galaxy.”

“Very good Sir,” a pause. Hux is frowning. 

“What is it General?” 

“Sir,” Hux begins, meeting his gaze with a slightly apprehensive look. “I think I may know where we can get some decommissioned Separatist droids from the Clone Wars.”


	20. Chapter 20

He heads from his rooms back to the Bridge, after lunch of a rationbar and a mug of seaweed steeped water. He feels strange. A kind of shivering anxiety, something bordering on horror clawing at the edges of his mind. He does not know why so he tries to ignore it. It is not the same anxiety he feels, deeper down inside, that the Supreme Leader might discover what he did the last time he visited the Separatist base where they’re headed. He hopes if he keeps everyone’s attention on the business at hand Kylo Ren won’t enquire as why he knows of the moon’s existence in the first place. 

The refuel and resupply has been completed. They are finally in a better position, at least when it comes to weapons, rations and the capacity to move beyond the local sector. 

This morning, as he was overseeing cargo shuttles full of munitions dock with the Finalizer, his presence was requested on the Bridge. He’d arrived to see the Supreme Leader, the command staff and techs huddled around one of the commstech’s stations. A declaration of war between Supreme Leader Savim and the combined forces of Supreme Leaders Alnil and Rhovat. Reports are still coming in of a battle at Dominion Base, two small fleets meeting above the planet, Stormtroopers meeting on the ground. A victor has not been decided yet.

While this little war rages they will be going to the jungle moon to retrieve the droids. The moon has, as far as he can tell by searching maps and planetary databases, no official name. It orbits around the lone, uninhabitable planet in its small system. Its location means it is neither near anywhere anyone would want to go, nor on the way to anywhere anyone would want to go. He imagines the Separatists chose it for this reason. If his fuzzy, infection muddied memories of the place are remotely reliable he thinks the main, if not only, use for the base had been storing, repairing, and supplying droids to other bases.

A noise. He is being comm-ed. “Hux here.”

“Sir,” he can virtually hear the tech salute over the line. “All the components have been unpacked and double checked, and the program has been loaded to the medidroids. Permission to begin assembly of the life-support armour for Captain Phasma?”

“Granted,” he replies, then dismisses the woman

He had almost forgotten the Captain, lying unconscious in the medbay. He had only really remembered her when he had been organising the resupply. It was odd how he’d found himself hesitating before he’d made himself order in the parts for the armour. He doesn’t know why. The woman is strong, fierce, and when she regains her mobility and independence should prove a valuable asset. He hopes. He feels apprehension. It will not take her long to work out he’s changed, and when she does he is not sure how she’ll react.

Thinking about her brings up another issue, the chain of command. Or, really, the holes in the chain of command brought about by mutiny and people displeasing the Supreme Leader. Their crew is comprised mainly of Stormtroopers and techs, with nowhere near enough officers to staff both vessels. Since it’s unlikely at present that a large number of officers are going to flee the other factions to theirs they are going to make some changes. If the droids prove salvageable, useful, which he hopes they will, it may be an idea to promote some of the Stormtroopers and techs to officers. 

His father would have killed him for even having the _thought_ of making officers out of Stormtroopers in the first place. It may be that they have no choice.

As it stands the Finalizer is the better staffed of the two vessels, while the Rectitude is mainly staffed by techs under the supervision of Neiro and Gydn Ren. Neither ship has a captain, in fact their only surviving Captain is Phasma, and she’s army not navy. So is he, technically, but when Snoke was alive his rank didn’t matter. Wherever Snoke sent him he went, and wherever that was he had authority second only to Snoke, and sometimes Kylo Ren. The situation they’re in currently is one where the traditional hierarchy of the First Order are not going to be all that helpful. They have no base and only two ships, a reasonable number of Stormtroopers but very few Fighter Pilots. It seems likely the whole hierarchy is going to have to be reconfigured in the foreseeable future. Another thing to consult the Supreme Leader about.

He still hasn’t asked the man about the lightsabre. He’d brought up the droids and then they’d started to discuss the resupply and then the conversation had come to a close before he remembered to mention the lightsabre. He will, later, when he sees the man next and they have the privacy to talk.

“Sir!” he is greeted by the command staff. Saiva Ren is lurking near the window, humming tunelessly once more. He doesn’t know where the Supreme Leader is. 

“Anything to report?”

“Heavy losses at Dominion Base. The traitors Alnil and Rhovat have bombed quite a large part of the local region, including towns, fields, pastures and supply centres for the base. Estimated losses to the local population number in the hundreds of thousands. This is apparently public knowledge as Leia Organa has released a statement condemning their actions.” Another little shiver of horror. It makes no sense. He, himself, has ordered the death of billion. _Under Snoke’s control. **No. That fact is not enough to absolve him.** Does he need absolution? The firing of Starkiller was in the First Order’s interests. It was an Atrocity. Unforgiveable. **Thoughts like that are treason.**_

“Can we trace this statement?” His voice remains perfectly level.

“No Sir. It is very heavily encoded.”

“I see. Still, have one of the techs examine it in detail, just in case,” Organa might have made a mistake in the encoding. If so they may be able to trace her location. He is not sure what Kylo Ren would do with that information.

The atonal humming is starting to get to him. The figure of Saiva Ren, clad in black, is staring out into streaks of hyperspace. Blankness. That’s the impression he gets. Blankness with something lying underneath, lying in wait like one of the thorn-fish of his childhood. Almost impossible to see buried in the sand before one stepped on them, pricking themselves with venomous spines in the process. Not many of his mother’s people died because of the thorn-fish, they knew the way of spotting them, but amongst mainstream Arkanisian society it was a yearly danger for those who went to swim at their placid, white-sand beaches, protected from most real dangers by nets the thorn-fish burrowed under. 

As if the Knight can sense him watching the figure turns towards him. He looks away, instinctively and then berates himself for looking like a fool. 

“ETA to our destination?” he asks a tech.

“Approximately fifty eight minutes, Sir,” the man replies.

He leaves the bridge, pacing the halls of the ship as he waits to arrive at the moon where he gave his mother to the water. He finds himself thinking of her. She was quiet. Gentle. Her voice was always soft, with the slightly rolling lilt of her people, she never raised it. She never raised her fists either. 

Her hair, in his memories, is always long and thick, with a slight wave, a soft strawberry blonde. He cannot remember the colour of her eyes. When they were on the planet and she was out in the sun too much she’d get an ‘Arkanisian tan,’ used derogatively even by mainstream Arkanisian society for the pale, slightly reflective cast the skin of his mother’s people developed to protect itself from the sun. He used to get it in little splotches, like his father’s freckles. Still does, if what he saw in the mirror that morning is any indication. _Ugly. Inhuman,_ that’s what Brendol Hux called it. She was pretty, he thinks, in a delicate kind of way. He thinks he must take after his father. 

His early life was spent in some kind of limbo, part way between the kitchens with his mother and his father’s quarters. Martelle would not let him live in their rooms on Arkanis, so he had his own, a tiny room away from everything. Once they left the planet things were different. His father had obviously given up on siring a legitimate child by that time, so suddenly he found himself heir apparent. It was then that his father had truly started training him to one day take up a position in the First Order.

He had seen his mother less and less. She had seemed to fade. Her slender form growing nearly skeletal. She had missed the water, she said the one time he had the opportunity and courage to ask her what was wrong. It may have been that. It was probably also his father’s brutality. 

He wants to tell someone about her. He wants to tell them that his mother was a wonderful cook, that she was gentle, that she had a lovely singing voice, that the only times he saw her really smile was when she saw him or the few times she took him back to the village where she was born, that his father was a brute, that his father took what she wasn’t offering, that his father stole her from her home to suffer and eventually die -at his hands- in space far away from the waters of her home. 

There is no one that he can tell.


	21. Chapter 21

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy Valentines-ish day, depending on your time zone and whether you think it's worth acknowledging or if you think the whole thing's nonsense. Thank you all for sticking with the story so far, and as always thank you so much for leaving kudos and comments. I think after the next chapter I might split things again and start a new fic for the next part of the story.

The moon is hot, lush, humid. It has no seas, the majority of its surface is covered in jungle veined with wide, fresh-water rivers. The air smells of plants, animals, rotting things, and fresh water, it sits close, almost smothering. Readings saying the relative humidity is at 97%. 

Before they could land they had to clear the elevated landing pad attached to the base, already mostly reclaimed by the jungle. Standing on its edge and looking down reveals a river, partially covering an old road. At some time its course must have shifted, and where vehicles and droids once moved giant turtles now bask in the sun. Each animal, a mass of leathery skin and shell hard enough to deflect a blaster bolt, lifted its huge head to watch them as they disembarked. He watches one of the animals as it slips off the river’s bank and into the water with a loud splash.

“Sir?” that’s Hux. He turns to look at the man. The redhead is standing with Lieutenant Mitaka and a squad of Stormtroopers. 

“Show me these droids,” he commands.

Hux leads the way into the base. The jungle has been hard at work here too. Windows have cracked, and even ones that haven’t have been worked loose in their sills by branches and vines. In places the roof has caved in, and trees are growing in the middle of some rooms. Even with so much of the base compromised lights switch on, or start flickering, displays show pixelated images or error codes. Their very presence seems to have triggered some automatic power-on, the energy being drawn from thermal generators buried deep into the moon’s crust.

The droids, when they find them, are housed deeper in the base, in rooms with thick walls and no windows. They are in remarkably good condition, considering the rest of the base, with only one storage room a complete write-off, the ceiling caved in and small animals with prehensile tails making nests amongst the remains of the droids. 

He sees mainly B1 battle droids, B2 super battle droids, and Droidekas, but there are a few other examples of models he doesn’t immediately recognise. He’s never had the same interest in droids as Luke, or even his grandfather was reported to have. 

He approaches a B1 battle droid and reaches out with the Force, as he’s not an expert in droids he’s not quite sure what the Force is telling him, but it seems to suggest the droid is only powered down and not broken. “Get the techs in here,” he orders. “Have the droids examined. If they’re salvageable we’ll pack them, and anything else useful, on the shuttle to bring back to the Finalizer.”

“Of course Supreme Leader,” Hux responds.

He does a quick, and not overly accurate, count of the droids in the storage room, curled up and packed tightly against each other. With the number of rooms he’s seen with a roughly equivalent number of droids in them, they might end up leaving the moon with a few thousand troops to swell their ranks. All for only the cost of fuel to the moon, repair -if much repair needs doing-, and reprogramming. 

“This was an excellent suggestion, General,” he says, looking over at the redhead. The man looks a little stunned. He tries to remember complimenting him for his plans in the past, his mind draws a blank. Surely he must have. At least sometimes. When the man was coming up with plans that have vitally shaped the way they’ve gone forward in the wake of the mutiny. Still his mind draws a blank. He will have to think on it.

His direct involvement is not needed in inspecting and loading the droids. He finds himself wandering the base, looking in rooms, watching techs and Stormtroopers go about their business. It is almost peaceful. When it comes time for the first shuttle load of droids to be shipped back to the Finalizer he almost considers getting onboard, but Neiro and Gydn are watching the Rectitude and Saiva’s watching the Finalizer, so he doesn’t feel any urgency.

Earlier, while they were in hyperspace on their way to the moon, he resumed his exercise regime. He has let himself lose condition in the days, weeks now, since Snoke died. Weights were harder than they should have been, and his endurance is down. He sparred for a while with the training droids. He was glad that he performed much as always, though he’d been more careful not to break anything beyond repair in this new world where the expense of repair and replacement now falls in his lap. With Saiva, Gydn and Neiro around he might even be able to spar properly, with the closest to an equal he’s likely to find outside of Rey. He has not fought another Force user since his stupid attempt to fight Luke’s Force projection. If he’d only thought. Reached out. _Sensed_ properly, he wouldn’t have made such an idiot out of himself.

He’s standing in an empty corridor, staring out a cracked window at the turtles bobbing to the surface of the river below when he sees movement out of the corner of his eye. A flash. A flicker. He turns. A figure, stumbling down the hall. He blinks, The figure disappears.

He grasps for the Dark, draws it in close, and then reaches out to sense what that was. He senses nothing, no, not quite nothing. Something small, weak, a shadow in the Force. Perhaps a Force ghost. Perhaps a memory.

Nothing attacks him. He lets himself relax. He turns back to watch the turtles. Another flicker.

He whirls around, the Dark drawn tight around him until the floor rumbles. There is a man, a young man, flickering in and out of existence. The details of the figure are blurry. The man is faceless. Dressed in something dark though he can’t tell the details of the outfit. The figure is stumbling down the hall, one hand clutched to his side, disappearing only to appear a few steps ahead of where he was or a few steps behind. Between one blink and the next there are two of them, three of them, a whole series. Each trapped in one slice of the journey from one end of the corridor to the other. Then a sensation like his ears popping. The figure vanishes.

He breathes deep. Keeps the Dark close, ready to use, and heads down the corridor in the direction the figure was going. He passes Stormtroopers and techs, droids being examined and droids being taken to the shuttle. Every now and then he sees a flicker of the figure, but no one else reacts. Definitely something in the Force. 

In one of the storage rooms the figure is kneeling by a droid, hands cupping its face the way his mother would cup his to see if he was alright when he fell as a child. It flickers. Its head is still a mass of something indistinct. A blur. Techs walk past, walk through it. It no more notices them than they notice it. He can sense them noticing him though, wariness rising in the room. He ignores it, keeps his eyes on the figure. As it bends down, almost as if to look the droid in the eye, a flicker of copper resolves itself in the haze of its head. _Hux._

He steps back. The figure vanishes. It’s Hux. He knows it’s Hux. The way it moves, even injured as it obviously is, and younger, shorter, it’s Hux. He is seeing some Force imprint of Hux. _Is it Hux’s memories, bleeding in because he linked their minds?_

A flicker. The figure is back in the corridor. He must follow it. 

It’s easier said than done. The figure, Hux, keeps vanishing. Reappearing in different locations, manifesting as different moments of what is possibly the man’s previous experience of the base. He gets turned around a few times. Chases images that leads him back the way he came. Eventually, hours later, hours in which techs and Stormtroopers ignore him and work around him, he finds the figure in the communications room.

Here it is split. A collection of slices of time. There are some seemingly stuck moving towards a commstation. There are some, a splintered, half merged group imputing data at the commstation. There is another one, clearer than the rest, standing there, hand clenching its side, talking. The face is partially resolved. Fragments of Hux’s features shining through the blur. His gaze look empty. His face is distraught. His eyes are red, and tears sometimes come into focus rolling down his cheeks. 

He can hear nothing. He knows Hux is talking to someone, but he can’t tell whom or what the man is saying. He watches this for a long while. Until another sensation like his ears popping. The manifold manifestations of Hux disappear until there is one, trudging its way out of the room, wavering, arms hanging weakly at its sides. 

A glance at the commstation, it’s dead. Nothing to be learnt from it. He follows the figure. It leads him out of the building, out of the base, down to moon’s surface near the river. He can see turtles through it, see them raise their heads to assess if he’ll make a nice dinner. He draws the Dark close, lets them feel it, heavy in the air. They give up without an attempt.

Up ahead, on the white road, crumbling to nothing, being consumed by river and jungle, he sees another figure. A real figure. Sitting cross-legged on the ground. The turtles are ignoring it just as they ignore him, though he can’t see why they should because it’s Hux. Not the Force image of Hux. The real Hux. The man is staring out into the river water with a desolate look on his face.

He approaches. The Force impression vanishes, with another ear pop. Another appears, inside, overlapping Hux. This time the figure is perfectly clear. It is Hux, young, late teens at the oldest, wearing a dark, First Order uniform. In is arms is a long bundle, wrapped in a blanket and strapped with stones. He’s shaking. Tears are pouring down his face. He steps forward, to the water. Wading in with the bundle. When he’s up to his waist he lays the bundle down, into the water. A flash, faded reddish-blonde hair escaping from beneath the blanket to lay on the river’s surface. The impression of Hux, clenching his eyes shut, a soundless sob shaking him. He lets the bundle go. It sinks. The figure vanishes. 

The figure reappears, inside and overlapping Hux. Bundle once more in its arms, headed once more to the river. 

_Mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother mother-_

He blinks, tries to shake away the idea. He can’t know for sure. Only Hux knows. “Hux?” he calls out. That same ear-popping sensation. The figure vanishes until all there is before him is the man.

Hux looks up at him. The redhead’s eyes are a little red. For a moment he doesn’t know what to say. He could just let it go. He could. But something, the sensation of being on a precipice, overtakes him. Maybe it’s the Force. Maybe it’s his own impatient nature. 

He goes over to the redhead and sits down on the remains of the road, next to Hux. “The Force showed me things here,” he says, because that’s probably a better way of putting it that accusing the man of letting his memories bleed out because _he_ was foolish enough to link their minds. Which might not even be what is happening. It really might be the Force. “You have been here before, when you were younger. Who was it you put in the river?”

There is a long moment, then Hux speaks, his voice soft, a little hoarse. “My mother.” 

His notion had been right. Hux had come here to dispose of his mother’s corpse. The question is why? “What happened to her?”

“My father killed her,” the redhead replies. He can feel Hux’s distress in the Force.

“Why?” he asks, and then regrets it when Hux grimaces. Looks away.

“An accident, I always assumed,” the man says, staring back out to the place in the river where he sank her corpse. “Brendol Hux was a brute. He saw her as his property, property he could treat how he liked.”

He feels sorrow. A horrible, yawning sensation in his chest. He wants to comfort the redhead but he doesn’t know how. He thinks back to being unable to shoot the command centre where he knew his mother was on the Resistance ship. He imagines Leia taken from him, not by his own actions, but by the actions of someone else. He then remembers that she almost was. A sick feeling begins to claw at him. 

Hux is talking again. “In truth he saw almost everyone as property. His wife, my mother, me, the Stormtroopers. People were either property, enemies, or -if they were strong enough- uneasy allies.”

“It’s a monstrous thing he did,” he says, softly. It is true. Hux hums in agreement. More than half sure he should just leave it be he still finds himself saying “So he killed her, and you brought her here?” 

“She would have wanted to be given to the waters. I am only sorry that I couldn’t bring her back to the seas of Arkanis,” the redhead replies. He feels Hux’s fear in the Force, fear tinged with resignation. The redhead turns to him, fixes him with those pale eyes. “What else did you see Supreme Leader? Have you come to kill me?”

“No!” he snaps, and then softer when Hux flinches from him. “No, I have not. Why do you ask?”

“Don’t you know?” the man says with a bitter laugh. “When he killed her, I took her body and ran from him. I ran from the First Order. He’d stabbed me, I thought I was dying and at that point I didn’t care. I don’t even know how I found this moon, but I did, and after I sank her body I went back inside that base-” the man gestures haphazardly over his shoulder “and I sent a communique to _your mother._ I told her about Snoke. I told her about the First Order. I told her _everything_ that I thought might help her destroy my father and what he believed in.” A pause. The redhead takes a deep breath. “I am a traitor. I have been a traitor since long before we ever met.”

He should be angry. He’s not. Hux is shaking. He thinks of the injured, heartbroken apparition walking the halls of the base, giving his mother to the water. “Why did you come back to the First Order?” he asks.

“Huh?” Hux frowns, obviously not expecting the question. “My father followed me, dragged me back, _reconditioned_ me.” _**Gave me to Snoke.**_ The last is an impression, the whisper of a voice in his mind. 

“Snoke,” he says. “Tell me about your relationship with Snoke. When I took those memories from you I took only an impression, not the context.”

Hux draws his limbs in close, hunching down. “I do not think you want to hear about that, Supreme Leader.”

“Please,” it’s too late to stop now. It’s started. Things lurking in the past are being dragged into the light. “Tell me.”

It takes a while for Hux to speak. The man seems very small, his eyes gazing into the middle distance. “If you insist, though I don’t know why you want to know. When my father found me here, brought me back to the SCC and reconditioned me he then took me to Snoke. I’d met the man before. I’d found him… unpleasant. This time my father asked Snoke to use the Force to reinforce the reconditioning, because it kept failing in the past. Snoke did so. Not long after that the man initiated a sexual relationship with me that lasted until you killed him. Half my life, or thereabouts.”

He feels very cold. Hux feels very cold, in the Force. “Was it your choice?”

Hux blinks. His face scrunches up before the redhead manages to smooth out his expression once more. “No. Snoke was like my father. I was a possession.”

“He raped you,” he finds himself whispering. Hux flinches at the word. “For sixteen, seventeen years?”

“I suppose he did,” Hux says, simply.

The road cracks beneath them. He feels furious. The Dark Side rises in him, circling the two of them in a protective bubble, lashing at the air around them. Hux stares at him, wide eyed. He can see turtles launch themselves in a panic into the river on the other side and start to swim downstream as fast as they are able, away from them. “He should not have done that,” he bites out. “I am glad I killed him.”

A long pause. “Will you kill me now?” Hux asks.

“No!” he insists.

“Why?” the man asks, his face crumpling. “I told you, I am a traitor.”

“You loved your mother,” it’s not a question, but Hux nods, grimacing, tears welling up. “I cannot blame you for doing your best to get revenge when she was taken from you in such a way.”

“I don’t understand,” the redhead whispers. “Why? The you I have known all these years would not hesitate to strike me down.”

“Things have changed,” he replies, “Since Snoke died. I have changed, you have changed…” he trails off, part of what Hux said finally registering. His father had reconditioned him. Snoke had used the Force to reinforce that reconditioning. _Does Hux even want to be here? Was this just another choice forced upon him?_

The thought of Hux leaving sends fury through him. The Dark lashes the air. The cracks in the road spread. This is another moment. He has a choice. He knows he has a choice. He reaches out, almost spasmodically, grabs Hux’s hand. The man jerks backwards. Stares at him. “If you want to leave I will let you.”

“Supreme Leader-?” the man murmurs.

“Don’t call me that,” he says, voice as gentle as he can make it. “I am not Snoke. I _will not_ be Snoke. If you want to leave tell me, I promise I will let you.”

Hux studies him for a long moment, those pale eyes roving his face as if the man was trying to read his mind. “I don’t want to leave,” the redhead says eventually. 

“We have to change,” he says, thinking of what he said to Rey about the past. _Kill it if you have to._ Snoke’s First Order has to die. They can become something else, something new. Something not Empire, Republic or First Order. “I am sorry for how I’ve treated you. I have assaulted you, terrorised you, been profoundly _ungrateful_ to you. We are only still here because I have had you by my side to guide me. I want to make a better future. I don’t want to bring the future Snoke saw into being, but I also don’t want a return to the corrupt and bloated Republic, where individuals used so-called-democracy as a means to power and privilege for only themselves,” memories of his childhood. His mother’s frustrations. A pause, a breath. “Will you help me?”

Hux stares at him, assessing, then nods. “Yes, Supre-” the man breaks off, obviously remembering his earlier order.

“My name is Ben, I might as well use it,” he says. It is time. Kylo Ren must die as well. 

A shriek and then shouting, the sound of blaster fire, cuts through the moment. He drops Hux’s hand, only just realising he was still holding it. They get to their feet, rush back towards the base. One of the Stormtrooper’s in on the ground, the bottom half of one of her legs missing. Nearby a turtle plops back into the water, unconcerned about the shots being fired at it.

Hux pulls himself back into the shape of General and marches onto the scene, orders spilling from his lips.


	22. Chapter 22

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this is the last chapter of this part of the story. The first chapter of the next part should hopefully be up in the next few days. Thank you all so much for sticking around, for reading, leaving kudos and all your lovely comments.

He does not know what the Supr- _Ben?_ is thinking. Ben. Has the man crowned himself Ben Solo once more? How will the crew respond to a leader called Ben Solo? To the link between the man and the Resistance? He can’t just call him _Ben,_ even if the man no longer wants to emulate Snoke. He’ll need a title.

He watches as FN-3411 is loaded on to the shuttle, the stump where the lower half of her leg once was well wrapped in bacta. He can remember warning everyone about the turtles earlier in the day, either she hadn’t listened or one had snuck up on her. Life can be so precarious.

For a while he thought his own life was over. His intention to stay focused on business, to try and ignore his last visit to the moon, had lasted only until he’d seen the river where he gave his mother to the water through the window of the shuttle. Things had been odd. The S-, _Ben_ had complimented him for his idea about the droids. Ben never complimented him. Ben gave orders, sometimes listened, other times attacked him, but never complimented. He’d found it strange. It had added to his sense of emotional unease. No matter how hard he tried to push down his feelings as the day passed he found himself becoming more and more distressed. 

There hadn’t really been anything for him to do. The techs had done their jobs, the Stormtroopers theirs. Mitaka had gone back with the first shuttle, to oversee the unloading at the other end. He’d found himself wandering the halls for a while, before he’d found himself drawn outside. 

He’d been to that part of the river twice in the past. Once to sink his mother’s body, and once when he’d gone back there to die. That’s where his father had found him. He’d sat, watched the water. The turtles should have made him wary, but they’d no more bothered him this time than the time before. 

After that he’d lost track of time. His mind had gone over the last time he was there, fragments of memory that he’d tried to forget, been forced to forget by Snoke, had caught at the edges of his mind. He thinks he might have cried for a while, cried silently, but he’s not sure. The next thing he knew Ben was there, and he had a sense, a horrible sense, that something was about to change.

The Force had shown the man things? Shown him putting his mother’s body in the water? He can’t imagine why it would, why Ben would care. Ben does seem to care. He should be dead, but Ben didn’t want to kill him. Ben was going to let him go. Let him leave if he wanted to, or at least that’s what the man said. It might have been a trap, it might have been a lie, _it didn’t seem like a lie._

He’d actually thought about it. Where would he go? What would he do? The galaxy is still in danger of ripping itself to shreds; factions of the First Order fighting each other, the Resistance still out there, and undoubtedly local rulers are gathering their strength, some more benevolent than others. No. There was nowhere to go. He could not abandon the mess he’d helped make. He could not abandon Mitaka, the Stormtroopers his father had created, the Sup- _Ben._ He also found he did not want to abandon Ben. He doesn’t know why. 

There’s a lot he doesn’t understand. The man’s anger, outrage it had seemed, about what Snoke had done to him. _Rape_ the other man had called it. He had not had the courage to think of it as such. That what it was though. Rape. He had been telling the truth when he said Snoke saw people as possessions, himself, also- he suspects- Ben. In a different way, he doubts very much that the old Supreme Leader made use of his student the way the man did of him, but he did make use of him. He finds himself wondering exactly how much choice Ben Solo had in where his life ended up. 

_Ben killed Snoke._ He’d suspected, or if not suspected that the man had done the deed himself, had certainly suspected he had a hand in it. Snoke must have pushed him too far. _Snoke deserved to die._ A dangerous thought, but then he had been a dangerous man. 

Once more he remembers being led in front of Snoke the first time, not the time the man had used the Force to reinforce the reconditioning, or the time the man had pulled him into his lap, but the _first_ time. There had been a scent in the air, except it wasn’t a scent, it was something buzzing behind his eyes, a sense, a taste, a sound, something like corruption. Like rot. Not the type of rot that is part of the cycle of death and renewal, some other kind of rot. A rot that nothing comes back from. He had been terrified. 

He had thought his father had gone insane to welcome this creature into the heart of the First Order.

_Are they still the First Order?_

Ben said they needed to change. Change into what? Is this what Mitaka meant, when the man spoke of what the First Order might become? Can they still be the First Order? For so long the First Order was Snoke, now it’s a bunch of petty warlords attacking each other and raining death and destruction down on civilians. He thinks of Starkiller Base. Nothing new then. Of course they’re not doing that currently, they’re just planning on swelling their numbers with droids- which neither Snoke nor his father ever would have approved of. **Human life first.** _Was Snoke even human?_ Often he didn’t seem human, but perhaps that was just a result of his use of the Dark Side.

“Would you like a rationbar?” he looks over, Ben is holding one out to him along with a bottle of water. It’s mid-afternoon, he hasn’t had lunch. He takes them.

“Thank you,” he says. The man had also apologised to him. Apologised for terrorising and assaulting him, but also for being ungrateful. The man had actually said that they wouldn’t still be here if it wasn’t for him. He doesn’t know what he thinks about that. It has some echoes of what Mitaka said to him. For a while earlier he had wanted very much to apologise to the Lieutenant for putting himself in a position to be killed so soon after the man told him to have more concern for his own safety. “Do you want to eat together?” he asks.

“Yes,” Ben replies. Glancing around. “Where would suit you?”

“I saw a room earlier, it must have been a private officer’s lounge. It is still structurally sound and has tables, if you think that would be appropriate?”

The man nods, gesturing for him to lead the way. They pass Stormtroopers and techs, still examining and packing droids. The room is small, light, two of the large windows are partially covered with vines, but the one on the far wall, overlooking the river is completely clear. He leads them to the table in front of it, moulded plasteel bolted to the floor, across from each other on two sides are chairs with dusty orange seat covers. 

He brushes some dust from a chair and sits. Ben sits opposite him. They unwrap their rationbars. Down below, in the river, he sees turtles bobbing along the surface, absorbing the heat of the sun. 

“I meant what I said,” the man says, swallowing a mouthful of rationbar. “I want you to help me bring the future into being.”

“I am not quite sure what that means,” a pause, he tries “Lord Solo?”

The man shakes his head. “No. _Ben,_ ” a gesture at the outside world, encompassing techs and Stormtroopers and everything else. “I suppose _they_ should call me Lord Solo, but I want _you_ to call me Ben. I know I said it earlier, but I am sorry for how I’ve behaved towards you. I need you with me.”

“I don’t know if me referring to you so informally will send the right message, Sir.”

“It will,” the man says, dark eyes intent. “It will tell everyone that, next to me, you are the most important person in the First Order.” 

“Are we still the First Order?” he asks after a long moment.

A pause. The man looks away, frowning, then meets his eyes. “I don’t know, but we are _something._ Something like the First Order, but _better._ We can do so much better.”

“We will need to have a more defined identity if we are to meet and best Savim and the other factions, as well as the Resistance-” he begins. Once more his comm beeps, as does Ben’s. 

They look at each other. Ben responds “General Hux is with me.” The man does not bother to identify himself, assuming, probably rightly, that his voice is immediately recognisable to the Command Staff he’s so thoroughly terrified.

“Sir, Sir,” the commstech acknowledges them both. “We have news of the battle at Dominion Base.”

“Yes?”

“Savim has retaliated and won. Both Alnil and Rhovat have been reported dead. Their army has been decimated, their fleet destroyed.”

“I see,” the man says. “Remain vigilant, if things change I want to be informed immediately.”

“Yes Sir!” the commstech says, the salute almost audible even from here. 

They look at each other. “You were right General, they are destroying each other.”


End file.
